


Black Flag

by Ias



Category: Mass Effect Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Banter, Dubious Morality, Enemies to Lovers, F/M, Renegade Shepard (Mass Effect), Space Pirates
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-18
Updated: 2018-06-18
Packaged: 2019-05-25 01:14:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 13
Words: 35,903
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14965922
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ias/pseuds/Ias
Summary: "Commander" Shepard and her second in command Jack are the most feared pirates in the Omega Nebula. Ever since cutting ties with the Alliance and Cerberus, their conquests have been numerous and their agenda unknown. When Shepard captures a small vessel and takes the vigilante Archangel prisoner, she immediately tries to strong-arm him and his crew into joining her cause.On the journey to the nearest outpost, the balance of power between them is constantly shifting—and tensions from within Shepard's crew threaten to destroy their wary alliance before it even begins.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Wellp, here it is folks! Canon-divergent post-ME2, with Garrus not recruited in ME1; Shepard as a morally dubious badass space pirate and Garrus as his good-ole Archangel self. Check out the accompanying fanart [here.](https://pyro-linx.tumblr.com/post/175015390557/heres-my-contribution-to-the-2018-mass-effect-big)
> 
> A million thanks to [Max](https://shepgarrus.tumblr.com) for helping whip this massive WIP into shape at the last minute. I am eternally in your debt, friend.

The bombardment exploded across the small ship’s forward windows, a red flower that withered as soon as it bloomed. That kind of metaphorical bullshit didn’t usually do it for Shepard, but in times like these she could get a bit sentimental.

By the time she called for Jack and EDI to cease fire, the cruiser was dead in space. This should have been an easy hit; their intel had confirmed the location of the ship with its holds full of stolen Blue Sun red sand, still nursing its wounds. Shepard was only here to relieve them of their cargo and let them go on their merry way; after all, she had two ships under her command, and could have wiped out the smaller frigate with the _Normandy_ alone.  

But apparently someone on board had eaten their Wheaties that morning, and what should have been a guaranteed surrender became a brutal last-stand that ended with Shepard blowing half of the smaller ship to kingdom come. Well, she'd tried playing nice. The days when she mourned her morals were long past.

Joker glanced at her over his shoulder, his eyes bright. "We've got enough juice to keep this up forever, Commander."

"I'm picking up life signs from the enemy ship," EDI said, her voice as cool as ever. "I detect no signs of casualties."

"Good. Status of their systems?"

"Aw, come on, Shepard!" Jack's voice crackled over the intercom. "They put a big dent in my brand new left engine. Let's just blow them to pieces!"

Shepard could picture her now, pacing back and forth on the bridge of the _Vengeful Bitch_ like a caged animal, her biotics flaring purple-blue in want of something to crush into putty. The image put a smile on Shepard’s face. "Murder and mayhem is fun and all, Jack, but I came here to get paid."

"Their hull has been breached at several points," EDI continued. "My readings suggest their engines are permanently disabled. Weapons are online, but it seems they are reconsidering their decision to die needlessly."

"Well, better late than never. Open a comm channel." Shepard sank back into the seat of her command chair, her wrists dangling over the arms. "This is Commander Shepard of the _Normandy_. Should I take the fact that you're no longer shooting at us to mean you've decided to surrender?"

No response. Leaning forward, Shepard squinted at the floating hull before them, jets of ignited air sputtering out into darkness. "Alternatively, I can pass this decision on to my second in command, who’d be more than happy to liberate our guns and wipe you off this plane of existence. Your call."

A crackle from the comms. Just dead air. The high of battle was quickly souring into impatience. Shepard didn't particularly feel like killing everyone on board, but she also didn't like being made to wait. "Alright, Jack—"

"Wait." The voice was rough, filtered through an EVA suit and the comm link, but the word was clear.

A slow grin spread across Shepard's face. "I'm giving the orders here. Do you want to rephrase that?"

Another crackle of static. For a moment Shepard almost thought the person on the other end of the comm, who had already been overconfident or egotistical or downright stupid enough to test her in the first place, wouldn't find the words to beg. But then the comm channel clicked open and the voice said flatly, "We surrender."

"That's more like it." On her gesture, EDI cut the comms channel short as Shepard rose to her feet. She straightened her spine, stretching out her shoulders and arms before lifting her helmet from its place at the foot of her chair. "Jack, put a team together. We're boarding them hot."

"Damn right. I hope they think they can catch us off guard."

"You know what to do if they try. Joker, EDI, keep a bead on their systems. I want to hear about it two minutes before they try anything funny."

Jacob was already waiting by the elevator. He nodded as she stepped in beside him, the gesture short but respectful. He'd never been all that friendly, even before things went to shit. As long as he respected her enough to follow her orders, that was all that mattered.

"Mordin's got the lab ready to stabilize the sand," he said as the doors slid closed. Shepard stood with her arms clasped loosely behind her back, enjoying the thrum of adrenaline in her veins. She could feel Jacob watching her from the corner of his eye, and knew he hadn't failed to miss her muted excitement. "You sure this is a smart move, Commander? They already put up a hell of a fight. Seems unlikely they're just going to roll over now."

Shepard shot him a sideways glance, raising one eyebrow. "Feels a bit more sportsmanlike to at least give them the chance to pull some shit, instead of blowing them out through a hull breach."

The smile that tugs at Jacob's mouth is reluctant, but genuine. "I didn't know you had a sportsmanlike bone in your body, Commander."

"Eh, you're right. I just want a chance to shoot some stuff." The elevator slid open before Jacob could reply, revealing the rest of the squad waiting by the Hammerhead. Miranda leaned against its side, as nonchalant as if they were about to take a ride to the Presidium; Zaeed acknowledged them with a grunt before sighting down the barrel of his pistol, checking the scope alignment. Shepard came to a halt in front of them. No one sprang to attention, offered any salutes or titles. No military discipline here; not anymore. "We pick up Jack's team on the _Bitch_ before heading over to the target. That’ll give their crew a few extra minutes to sweat under the threat of our guns. You know what to do. If anyone tries anything, put a bullet in them."

"You always did have a way with words, Shepard," Zaeed rasped, his words punctuated by the click of his thermal clip sliding into place.

"Words are cheap, Zaeed. I'll stick with bullets when I can."

 

*

 

The ship's crew had already isolated the hull breaches by the time Shepard and Jack took their squads through the airlock. Their squad surged forward like a torrent of water, spread out around the room to surround the small group of people huddled in its center. "On your knees!" Jack shouted. "Grab some scalp, assholes!"

The ship's crew dropped almost instantly. Jack’s battle voice had that effect on people. A crack split the air as her boot made hard contact with a batarian's knee as he didn't move fast enough. He hit the ground hard with a cry of pain, and Jack's face split open in a viscous grin. From his place guarding the perimeter, Grunt laughed.

Shepard watched coolly as her crew corralled the prisoners, until they all knelt in a straight line with their hands laced behind their heads. At her side, Jacob waited, his gun training over each figure just waiting for the wrong twitch. The air filtered through their helmets smelled of burning things; an unwelcome prickle ran up and down Shepard's spine, but she fought it down. She'd been on derelicts before, wrecks held together only by the twisted melted-down metal left over from the _Normandy's_ guns. The vacuum of space was far away yet.

"Jacob. Miranda." They stepped forward, silent and efficient. "Search them for weapons."

They worked fast, moving from prisoner to prisoner. Twelve of them total; even outnumbering them, it was clear none of their adversaries planned on putting up a fight. Some were leaning on each other, visibly burned or bleeding. Good. If they were already in pain, that was half the fight gone out of them already. As much as Jack might have craved bloodshed, Shepard got little enjoyment out of shooting people with no chance of fighting back. Unless they _really_ pissed her off.

"Clear," Jacob said, straightening up at last. Shepard nodded at him and Miranda before stepping forward herself. The ship's crew kept their eyes on the ground in front of them, not even glancing up as Shepard's boots came to a stop in front of the line. She was surprised to see what a mixed bag it was, humans and batarians and asari, with a couple turians thrown in to boot. Her intel said they weren't affiliated with any gang, but it was hard to imagine what else could bring such a colorful bunch of suicidal shitheads together.

Standing above the line of prisoners, she reached up to remove her helmet. She took her time with the clasps, relishing the hiss of air as the seals released and she pulled it off her head to inspect each crewmember individually. She saw a couple widened eyes, or people who blinked a few times too many—her reputation preceded her.

"I see a few of you know who I am," she said, beginning to amble down the line of prisoners before her. "Good. That'll save us time." Few were meeting her eyes. In all honestly, Shepard had come to love this part. Every one of them knew that their lives were in her hands; she took her time walking from one end of the line to the other, scrutinizing each of their faces. "Bit of a motley bunch."

"Ugly, too," Jack said.

"Oh, now let's not be cruel. Not when we're guests on this fine vessel of theirs." Shepard paused halfway down the line. "None of you will come to any harm, as long as you do _exactly_ as I say. We came here for your cargo. You put up a fight, and we had to do something about that. Now as long as you don't get any other colossally stupid ideas into your heads, I'm sure we'll all get along just fine."

It wasn't fear written into the down-turned faces on either side of her; anger made their features tight, lips pressed together. No, this wasn't some bunch of mercs in it for the cash alone. There was _belief_ in those faces. And that was damn dangerous.

"Who's in command?" No one spoke. Not even a guilty dart of the eyes. Shepard put her hands on her hips and let out a sigh for effect. "Well, see now—I can't allow that. Because I asked you a question, and ignoring me is just _rude_." Her right hand moved to loosen her assault rifle in its holster. She saw the throat of the nearest asari bob nervously.

"That won't be necessary."

Shepard recognized the voice from the comms immediately, even with the turian flanging suddenly apparent. The turian at the end of the line raised his head, his blue armor matched by the blocky familial markings spread across his face plates. Unlike his crew, he met her eyes without hesitation. She saw the anger written into his team's faces directed back at her tenfold.

Shepard's hand eased off her gun. The irreverent grin returned to her features, as much a part of her armor as her helmet. She stepped right up to him, just a little too close to be comfortable, and returned the appraising gaze. Kneeling as he was, she had the benefit of looking down on him. He blinked, but that was it. Not even a twitch of the mandibles. Credit to him for that. Most people couldn't help but shrink away from the scars burning out of her face like a lighter held under a sheet of paper. "You've heard my name. What's yours?"

"Most people call me Archangel."

The laugh tore out of Shepard's throat before she could care to stop it, echoed by her squad behind her. She turned around to shoot them all a theatrical head-shake before turning back to the turian. "Not _the_ Archangel?"

"Well listen to that, Shepard," Jack drawled. "We’ve caught ourselves a celebrity."

"And here I didn't bring a pen for an autograph." Honestly, the look on the turian's face was priceless: about one part cold anger and two parts chagrin. "Sure, we've heard of you, _Archangel._ You've been fucking with our favorite prey for almost a year now. I just expected something a little..." She let her eyes wander up and down his armored frame again, before glancing at the wreck that was his ship. " _...more._ "

When he spoke, Archangel’s voice was level. "Two on one isn't really a fair fight. If you’re looking for a challenge, you could hand me a gun and see which of us walks away."

Shepard whistled low under her breath, grinning at the jeers that rose from her squad. "You've got some fight in you—for all the good it did you."

Her hand snaked out. Faster than he could pull away, she had Archangel by his plated chin. His mandibles flared in surprise, his eyes widening, but Shepard held him fast as she leaned into his space. His eyes bored into hers, unflinching. "If you know what's good for you and your crew, you'll forget every ounce of that fight right now."

At last he jerked away, and Shepard stepped back with a laugh. "So. If you don't mind, we'll be helping ourselves to your cargo now."

Archangel stared up at her. Even with those flat turian plates, his expression was suspiciously blank. "Cargo?"

"Don't play dumb with me." Shepard bent forward to brace her hands on her knees, bringing herself to his eye level. "The red sand. Where is it?"

"Oh... _that_ cargo," Archangel drawled. His voice was remarkably calm for a turian surrounded by armed pirates. "Might want to look out a window. While you took your time preparing to board, we vented it all. Maybe if you spend a few months vacuuming up this quadrant, you could scrape together a barrel or two."

Shepard went rigid. When she spoke, her voice was deadly quiet. "I sincerely hope you're joking."

If Archangel saw the danger in the hardening lines of her face, he didn't change his expression. "Afraid not," he said, his voice still infuriatingly flippant. Shepard could already hear the disbelieving mutters from her squad behind them.

She reached up to tap  her ear, her eyes never leaving the turian before her. “EDI, can you confirm?”

A brief but telling pause. “…I detect only trace residues of red sand on board the vessel, Commander.”

Shepard lowered her hand, mouth a thin line. “That was a very stupid thing to do.”

"We didn't steal all that red sand from the Blood Pack just to have a bunch of lowlife scavengers sell it right back to them."

"How heroic of you." Shepard straightened, debating her options. She could shoot him where he knelt. In her current state of mind, that option was _very_ appealing. But not, unfortunately, very productive.

In an instant her pistol was out of its holster and pressed against Archangel's neck. "I really hate heroes."

From this close, she could tell when Archangel's breathing picked up. So he _could_ feel fear. Well, that was something. The key was pounding that fear through his thick skull.

"Go ahead," he said. "Shoot me, if it makes you feel a bit better about the fact that you lost."

Slowly Shepard lowered her pistol. "Maybe I don't shoot you. Maybe I pick a member of your crew and shoot them instead. How would you feel about that?"

He held her gaze. To Shepard's amazement, the fear was totally gone. Somehow, he knew she wouldn't do it. She wasn't a sadist, no matter her reputation. Times like these, she almost wished she was. But as soon as he opened his damn mouth and called her bluff, she'd have to go and prove him wrong. She couldn't afford to look weak in front of her crew—in front of Jack least of all.

But maybe Archangel was smarter than he looked. After a long moment he broke her gaze to stare down at the floor, like a puppet with his strings cut. "You don't have to do that."

His voice contained no trace of emotion, but it was enough. Shepard relaxed, slowly sliding her pistol back into its holster on her hip. “You’re right. I don’t have to do anything I don’t want to. And what I _want_ is to turn a profit. Lucky for you, there’s more profit in keeping you alive than smearing this hold with all your insides.”

“Oh, come on Shepard,” Jack snarled, her biotic aura flaring. “These bastards crossed us. No one gets to do that and walk away.” In one smooth motion, Jack stepped forward and grabbed a kneeling human by the back of his shaved skull. The man’s eyes widened until his irises swam in a sea of white terror. The biotic aura enveloped her hand, surrounding his head like a halo. “Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t blow their fucking skulls open, one by one.”

“Because I fucking told you not to,” Shepard snapped, years of military training making voice a blunt-force weapon. She held Jack’s gaze, ignoring the pulse of biotic energy between them. If any of her hired mercs had dared disobey an order Shepard would have had a bullet in their skull quicker than breathing. But she knew Jack. Jack would fall in line.

“Fuck this.” The words were so quiet Shepard barely heard them. But the flicker of movement in the corner of her eye she’d never have missed. The second turian was stirring, his hand moving—Shepard had her hand on her gun. She hadn’t wanted this, this should have been _bloodless_ , god damn it—

“ _Sidonis_.”

Archangel’s voice was low, but it carried like a roll of thunder. No hard snap of military discipline here. Shepard couldn’t translate subvocals but she didn’t really need to; the sheer force of will set the air humming. Her hand hesitated on her pistol as she stared at the turian, and watched as his hand opened. A quiet _ting_ of metal hitting the floor, and Miranda stepped forward to scoop up the razor-thin blade he’d been hiding in his fringe.

Jack, luckily, had failed to notice this tableau. She was too busy glaring at the man whose brains she was about to turn into confetti. Shepard waited. She saw Jack’s eyes narrow, her fingers digging into the terrified man’s scalp; and then she shoved him forward with a growl of disgust, the biotic bloom around her fist dissipating into nothing.

When Shepard looked back to Archangel, his blue eyes had gone dull. So, the great vigilante had a weak spot when it came to his crew. And as simple as that, she knew she had him.

Shepard smiled; it was not an expression mean to put him at ease. "Well now, Archangel. You just made things a hell of a lot more complicated for us both."

 She met Jack's eyes over his head. "Split them up. Half his crew in my brig and half on the _Bitch_. EDI, Joker, get a tow ready. We're taking this piece of junk with us."

Shepard got no small measure of satisfaction from the growing shock in Archangel's eyes. Whatever he'd expected her to do, it clearly wasn't this. She could imagine the thoughts running through his head, scenarios of his crew being sold to slavers or tortured for information or simply killed for fun—luckily, Shepard’s reputation was far more brutal than she’d ever had cause to be. Being feared saved time and effort.

“Not this one,” she said, as Jacob started to haul Archangel to his feet. “Take him up to my cabin. Archangel and I are going to have a little chat.”

She turned around to grin at the suggestive jeers from Jack’s team. “Enough yapping, assholes. You have your orders.”

Laughing, her crew immediately fell to their tasks. Shepard turned her back on Archangel and his crew while her squad set to binding their hands, instead striding over to the nearest computer terminal and downloading the ship’s diagnostics onto her datapad.

A quick glance was all it took to determine how badly they were fucked. She’d been counting on the income from selling that sand, and their attack on the ship had disabled almost all of its major functions. It was worth little more than scrap metal at this point, unless Shepard planned to sink even more money into repairing it—money she needed, damn it. She didn’t miss her days of working for Cerberus, but she did miss the unlimited resources.

She felt rather than saw Jack approach, the hairs on her arms prickling as the powerful biotic stomped up beside her. “My amp is still itching for a fight,” she grunted. “Hope you’re finding something on their computer to make this shitstorm worth our while.”

 Shepard didn’t look up from her datapad. “We can sell the hull for scrap parts on Omega. My guess is we’ll get about 20k for it—”

“ _20_?” Jack exploded, drawing far too many gazes from their nearby crew. “That’s less than a fourth of what we would have gotten for that sand if we’d just killed the bastards before we boarded.” Jack glanced up and noticed the looks some of her squad were shooting her way. “Stop flapping your goddamn gums and get to work,” she snarled at them, sending any other bystanders scurrying away.

Mindful now of listening ears, Jack stepped closer and grabbed Shepard by the arm. “This is bullshit, Shepard. You’re really going to let them fuck with us and then give them a free cab ride to the nearest port? What happens when the people we’re _actually_ against find out we’ve gone so soft?”

Shepard slowly lowered her gaze to the tattooed hand on her arm, until Jack released her and took a step back. Only then did Shepard meet her eye again, her gaze hard. “You have no idea who Archangel is, do you?”

Jack shrugged, crossing her arms over her bare chest. “They didn’t give me a goddamn newspaper on the _Purgatory._ ”

“Fair enough.” Shepard watched as the last of the crew was loaded into the Hammerhead, Archangel among them. His eyes were low, but she watched him scanning her squad out of the edge of his vision, noting weapon placement, identifying marks, anything he could use against them. If she didn’t trust her squad completely, she’d probably have shot him where he knelt. He was intelligent, resourceful, driven—dangerous. Maybe too dangerous. But he had something she needed.

“This is about a lot more than just scrap metal,” she said to Jack. “That turian has been the bane of the three big gangs for over a year and a half. He always knows where to strike to hit them hardest, and his team makes a raid look like a surgical operation.”

“Alright, I get it, you’re totally wet for his methods. You going somewhere other than a sexual fantasy with this?”

“Stuff it, Jack. Archangel’s operation isn’t so successful on blind luck. They have some of the best intel in the game—everything _we_ would need to take our mission to the next level.” A slow smile spread over Shepard’s face. “And I want it.” 

“Hmph,” Jack grunted. “Stealing from the good guys so we can be better bad guys. I kinda like it.”

The door to the airlock slid closed. As it did, Archangel’s eyes lifted for a brief moment; they locked with Shepard’s. Blue, and fierce, and above all, _defiant_. Something passed through her, a jolt like she’d caught herself falling asleep. Like she’d almost remembered something she’d forgotten. But then the doors closed, taking those sharp eyes with them.

It wasn’t long after that when Shepard found it, a glint of something shiny and blue from the rubble and tangled wires on the floor. Bending down, she pulled it out from halfway beneath a crumpled panel and found herself holding the glass screen of a facial visor, its displays flickering weakly without its attached headset and power source. She held it up to the light, wondering why it felt so familiar.

In the end, she slipped it into a pocket and put it out of her mind. There was work to be done.


	2. Chapter 2

 Only when the work stabilizing Archangel’s ship in preparation to tow it was well underway did Shepard take the Hammerhead back to her ship. They’d be ready to get underway in an hour or so, in the unlikely event that nothing went wrong. In the meantime, Shepard had a guest to entertain.

Jacob was waiting for her in the hanger bay, moving to intercept her before she’d even stepped out of the shuttle. “Commander,” he said, falling into step. “We have our half of the prisoners secured in the port cargo hold. 24 hour watch.”

“Good.” Shepard handed him her datapad and slapped the button for the elevator. “Make sure Joker remembers to look at these diagnostics before going cowboy on the towing cables. Their ship is like Swiss cheese right now.”

“I’ll make sure he keeps the yee-haws to a minimum.” The elevator door opened and Shepard stepped inside; to her surprise, Jacob followed her in. “Commander, if I could have a word—?”

“You don’t need to ask, Jacob.” Shepard leaned against the wall and crossed her arms over her chest, regarding him curiously. Jacob had always been the “follow orders without question” type—a habit from his time in the military—so when he came to her with doubts, she listened. Now he waited until the doors of the elevator shut them away from prying ears before clasping his hands behind his back. “Sir, the crew isn’t happy about how this last job shook out.”

Shepard chuckled softly. “I’m not happy about it either.”

“I get that, Shepard. And I know it wasn’t your fault. Most of the crew knows that too, but some…” Jacob turned and started to pace, his frown directed at the elevator floor. Almost automatically, Shepard reached for the elevator’s control panel to freeze it in place. Clearly this wasn’t going to be a quick conversation. The elevator’s upward progress slowed with a hydraulic whine, until she and Jacob stood in silence.

“It’s our newer recruits,” Jacob continued at last. “The muscle we had to take on after we ditched Cerberus. They may not be as bad as the mercs and criminals we’re hitting, but most are just in it for the money. They wouldn’t know a Reaper if it was right in front of their nose.” Jacob seemed to catch himself pacing; he stopped, shaking his head. “Now someone else beats us to our haul, bangs up our ships and jettisons our payload, and suddenly we’re stuck towing a  broken hull back to port for a fraction of the credits we need—and with a bunch of prisoners to keep alive, too.”

“Do you think the crew might take it out on them?” Shepard didn’t change her relaxed posture, but her voice had developed an edge.

Jacob hesitated. “No,” he said at last. “Most are loyal enough to weather the rougher patches. But I don’t like these new people, Shepard—they signed on because they heard too many of the more bloodthirsty stories about you.”

A wry smile tugged at Shepard’s lips. “Those are some of my favorites.”

“And only half of them are true. They’re going to figure that out sooner rather than later. And I’ve been hearing things, especially from Kelas Tyr—"

Shepard laughed, though her heart wasn't in it. "Tyr is a two-bit merc with more implants than brains. If the shit she’s saying is finding its way back to you, then she clearly means it to."

"That's exactly what I'm worried about. _Shepard_." Jacob stepped into her line of vision, tilting his head to meet her evasive gaze. "You should be taking this seriously. Tyr may be stupid, but it's exactly the kind of stupid you should be worried about. If this was just the crew complaining amongst themselves I wouldn't be worried, but..." Jacob shrugged. "Tyr has enough allies now that she's stopped trying to be subtle. She's gaining support."

"My crew would never turn."

"Your crew, maybe not. But not everyone on this ship is exactly your crew anymore, are they? Half of them are just here for the cheap and dirty paycheck. We may need the manpower, but those numbers are going to be what gets us if Tyr takes this far enough."

Shepard tilted her head back to stare at the elevator's ceiling. "You really think it could come to a mutiny?"

The word hung in the air between them, ugly and dangerous. Jacob paused, long enough that Shepard met his gaze again. His brow furrowed from thoughts he clearly didn't want to be entertaining. "I'm not sure," he said at last. "We've been through this sort of thing before, but this time it feels different."

"It does, doesn't it? God damnit." Shepard gently banged the heel of her hand against the elevator wall behind her, the gesture more telling of restraint than of frustration. "With just a few more jobs, we’ll have enough resources to take the Suns. And from there—” She shook her head. “We're so _close_ , Jacob.”

His smile was tight and brief. "But who's closer; us, or the Reapers?"

"I guess we're going to find that out. But I'll be damned if some deadbeat varren-fucker like Tyr tries to get in my way."

She reached over to release the elevator’s electronic lock, and felt it smoothly resume its climb. When the doors opened on her cabin a moment later she clasped Jacob by the shoulder as she stepped past. “Keep an eye on her for me. If we’re lucky, I’m about to get us all the intel we need to fund our missions until the end of the universe.” Her smile, when it came, was bitter. "However many months that ends up being.”

Jacob shot an apprehensive glance at her closed cabin door. “You sure it’s a smart move to be alone with him? This guy isn’t someone to mess around with.”

“Neither am I.” With one last grin as the elevator doors closed, she turned to face her door.

It had been an hour or two since she had Archangel stashed in her cabin. Plenty of time for him mull his options over; specifically, the lack thereof. Shepard lingered outside the door a moment longer. “Anything to report about our new guest, EDI?”

“Negative, Shepard. His primary actions have been to scan the immediate vicinity for potential weapons, and attempt to break free of his bonds by dislocating his thumb.”

Good. Trapped, nervous, and in a mild amount of pain. This would be easier than Shepard might have hoped. She activated the door to her quarters and stepped inside.

The fish tank washed everything in cold blue light as she made her way down the short flight of stairs. Archangel sat with his hands bound behind his back to the leg of her couch where it was welded to the floor. Shepard almost laughed; at least they hadn’t shackled him to the headboard.

He raised his head to meet her gaze as she stopped at the bottom of the stairs. It couldn’t have been comfortable, slumped on the hard floor with his arms behind his back. Turians expressed very little emotion through facial movements, so it was his eyes that Shepard watched. Cold calculation stared back at her. Perhaps this wouldn’t be so easy, after all.

“If you’ve done anything to hurt my crew, I’ll make sure you regret it.”  The anger in his eyes didn’t color his tone; he spoke almost conversationally, as if threatening pirate captains while chained to the floor was an everyday activity for him. God, there was something about that voice—and those eyes too. Something _familiar._

“Your crew is alive and unharmed,” Shepard said, hanging back for the moment. “As long as everyone cooperates, we’ll all get along just fine.”

“Ah,” Archangel said dryly. “You’ll forgive me if I don’t find those to be the friendliest of terms.”

“I don’t need you friendly. I need you _cooperative_.” Shepard made her way across the room to the cabinet beside her bed, and took out a bottle and two glasses. With a gentle clink, she set them on the table near where Archangel was bound, before pouring two fingers of liquid too dark to be whiskey into a single glass. The second she left empty, an invitation or a warning, before sitting down on the other side of the couch and propping her feet on the table to regard Archangel pensively over the lip of her glass.

The silence drew out, lazy on her end and brittle on his, like a dry strip of rubber stretched too far. There was a time in Shepard’s career when she would have been horrified at herself, holding power and authority over someone like the blade of an executioner’s axe. Back then, she hadn’t _wanted_ to feel the rush of exhilaration she felt now, rising like a flame to meet the heat of the ryncol sliding into her stomach, the cruel satisfaction as Archangel stared up at her from the floor and waited to see what she’d do next.

“Do you have a name?” she said at last, without expecting him to be dumb enough to share it.

“I have one, sure. But if you’re asking me to share it, I’m afraid you’re out of luck.”

A faint twinge of disappointment. With a name, it would have been easy to figure out why she felt like she knew him. Instead she took a slow sip of whiskey, enjoying herself a little longer. “Alright then, _Archangel_. If I untie you from the couch, are you going to do something stupid?”

Archangel cocked his head. “That seems like a trick question.”

Shepard leaned back and shifted her knee, giving Archangel a good look at the pistol strapped to the side of her leg. “Just tell me you’ll behave and I’ll let you off the floor. And understand that if you do try anything, I’ll have EDI vent the compartment on this ship where half your crew is enjoying our hospitality.”

“Are you this charming to all of your prisoners?”

“Only the mouthy ones.” Shepard leaned forward to deposit her glass on the table before standing up and crossing the space between her and the turian. He shifted his long legs slightly, as if trying to get out of her way; she simply stepped over him and to the side, before kneeling down to key in her override code to the shackles around his wrists. She couldn’t help but notice his long talons sheathed within his gloves; she may have her pistol, but he had three deadly weapons on each of his hands.

Before releasing the mechanism at last, she reached out to probe experimentally at the joint of his thumb. When he gave a sharp hiss, she smiled. So EDI was right. “These are pressure-sensitive cuffs,” she said as they fell open in her hands. She tossed them to the floor where he’d sat a moment later. “Not exactly something you can wriggle out of.”

“Well I had to try something. I was getting bored.” His voice was bone dry. Slowly, Archangel drew his arms out from behind him and began kneading at the flesh around his injured digit. Meanwhile Shepard returned to her side of the couch to pour a healthy dose of liquor into the second glass, and top up her own.

“Some earlier models of the pressure cuffs have a glitch in the sensitivity hardware,” Archangel said. “I’ve gotten myself out of them before.”

“And what glitch might that be?”

“You know, I don’t think I’ll tell you.”

Shepard chuckled. She was willing to be good natured about Archangel’s backtalk, especially now that she didn’t have to put on a show for her crew. Something was niggling at the back of her mind, flaring up every time the turian spoke. “You find yourself getting handcuffed often?”

“Something like that.”

Slowly Archangel rose to his feet. He loomed over her, even from the other side of the table; there must have been seven feet of him, though he kept one hand braced on the back of the couch to support his legs as his circulation improved. Shepard stared up at him, breathing in the smell of her alcohol and draping her arm casually across her thigh where she could have her finger on her pistol’s trigger in two heartbeats if she needed to; but the turian just lowered himself gingerly onto the other side of the couch. She couldn’t be sure whether his rigid posture was from stiff joints and muscles, or whether he was just tense. It was almost cute, an in uptight kind of way. Shepard didn’t normally go for aliens, but she _did_ go for competency. Something Archangel had already demonstrated to have in spades, by reputation alone.  

“You remind me of someone, you know,” Shepard said after a while. Archangel just blinked at her. “I just can’t figure out who.”

Something glinted in his hands that made Shepard’s body go as taut as a wire—but it was only the empty handcuffs she’d dropped to the floor. He turned them over in his strange three-fingered hands, delicate in spite of their size. “An old friend, maybe?”

“No.” She tilted her head. Every single time he spoke, she got a little closer. “Not an enemy, either.”

“You must be confusing me with someone else.”

“I never forget a face.” Shepard took her boots off the table. “I _do_ know you.” The moment she said it, she was sure of it; and with faint surprise, she realized Archangel had been pointedly avoiding her gaze ever since she first suggested the idea. “And you remember me.”

Slowly, Archangel leaned forward to set the empty cuffs on the table with a click. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Oh, come on, what was it—did we have a drunk fuck on Omega or something? Aliens aren’t normally my thing, but when the ryncol is flowing—”

That got his attention. At last his eyes darted up to hers, a flash of angry blue. Only for an instant—an instant was all it took. “What possible business could I ever have with you?” he snapped, but Shepard hardly heard him.

She felt as if she’d been struck with a force, the memory gaining momentum as it passed through the years until it hit her between the eyes like a bullet.

_I don’t need a turian shooting me in the back when I least expect it._

For a moment she could only stare at him, a smile slowly building on her face, before leaning back in her seat and spreading her arm over the back of the couch. “I remember now.”  

Archangel was doing a good job of appearing unconcerned, but Shepard was a damn good poker player and knew a bluff when she saw one. His hands were laced together too neatly. His trigger finger twitching.

She pressed the rim of her glass to her teeth as she grinned at him, savoring the fumes on her palate before she drank deep. “Honestly, I’m not surprised I didn’t recognize you. New name, new game, _almost_ a new you.”

At last she leaned forward to set her empty glass on the table, her elbows propped on her knees as she held his gaze. “You’ve come a long way from CSEC— _Vakarian_.”


	3. Chapter 3

And to think, it had all started out so well.

Their precision strike against the Blood Pack freighter had gone off without a hitch. No injuries, minimal ship damage, and all enemy targets neutralized. One of the neatest ops his team had pulled off yet; after struggling so long to control her biotics Weaver had finally got the hang of the singularity, and Butler had finally perfected his new scope mod—

Well. All that became irrelevant the second those two ships blipped onto their scanners, closing fast on their position. It was as if they knew exactly where Garrus’s ship was going to be; but the hows and whys scarcely mattered, because Lena on the comms was calling out that the newcomers had scrubbed their ships’ identifiers and were locking weapons on them, and the crew buckled down for a fight.

In retrospect, it had been the wrong call. And now here they were: captured by vicious pirates, their mission failed, their survival dubious at best. Here _he_ was, in the captain’s personal cabin being plied with liquor and smooth talk, face-to-face with a ghost.

A ghost with a gun strapped to her thigh, who had just spoken his name.

“Or should I call you Garrus?” Shepard continued, smirking at him over her glass. “We weren’t exactly on a first-name basis last time we met, but given the current circumstances…”

Garrus said nothing. He’d recognized her instantly, of course. Shepard had been a living legend, and then a dead one—Spirits only knew what she was now. From the moment he’d seen her he’d known his only chance was if she had forgotten him, and well. That was shot right to hell the second she said his name.

It was the first time in two years he’d heard it; he’d left Garrus Vakarian behind, along with every other piece of his identity, when he hopped a freighter to Omega what felt like a lifetime ago. Even his own squad didn’t know his true identity. It wasn’t that he didn’t trust them—well, that wasn’t strictly true. He didn’t trust anyone at all when it came to the safety of his family, who he hadn’t contacted since he put on the mantle of Archangel.

Hearing his name spoken now was like a word that broke a spell; as if by naming him, Shepard had reached into his past to grasp a single thread, and unravel everything he had become.

At once every bargaining chip—every deed to his name as Archangel, every unfounded threat he could have made—instantly tumbled from his fingers. He wasn’t a seasoned vigilante, not in her eyes. He was Garrus Vakarian, the painfully earnest CSEC detective, idealistic to the point of naïveté. Just like two years ago, she held all the cards; and there wasn’t a damn thing he could do about it.

She wasn’t oblivious to his reaction. Her grin was positively obnoxious. “No need to get jumpy. Your secret’s safe with me.”

Garrus didn’t acknowledge her, let alone point out that she was lying. He was no expert at reading human facial features, but only an idiot would willingly throw away such a massive bargaining chip. And Commander Shepard—or whatever she was now—was possibly the furthest thing from an idiot Garrus had ever had the misfortune of crossing paths with.

Garrus coughed, barely resisting the urge not to shift nervously. Spirits, he wished he still had his rifle. Just touching it would stop his mind from racing. “Can’t blame me for being on my guard, Commander—only you’re not technically a Commander anymore, are you?”

She shrugged. “I kept the title—I think it suits me. It’s not as ostentatious as _Archangel_ , but it gets the job done.” Her smile widens. “You _have_ heard the stories, then.”

He focused on relaxing his hands where they lay in his lap, refusing to rise to the bait. “I heard you were dead.”

“Oh, come on, Vakarian—you can do better than that. That’s hardly the worst thing they’re saying about me these days.”

Her grin was a wide open pit. Well, if she wanted to hear the worst of it, he could oblige. “Alright then,” he said, leaning forward. “I heard you died, and Cerberus brought back a clone and made it _think_ it was Commander Shepard—but when the Alliance and the Council wouldn’t take the bait, they cut you loose as a failed experiment, and threw you to the wolves.” He waved an ambivalent hand. “Well, that’s the more complimentary version. Plenty of people say you just liked the killing.”

As he spoke, the smile on Shepard’s face grew as thin as garroting wire. That was the problem with those flexible human faces; they revealed so much _emotion_. Meanwhile, his most damning subvocals were all imperceptible to the human ear. He might not be an expert, but he was fairly certain that Shepard really, _really_ didn’t like being called a clone. He leaned back at last, one mandible twitching. “Have I missed anything?”

A brief but telling pause. “Most people just think of that story about the salarian and the chef knife,” Shepard said at last.

“ _Right_. I always assumed that was just a grisly rumor.”

“It _is_ pretty inaccurate. It was a batarian, not a salarian.” She leaned back in her seat, studying him. In the hour or two he’d been alone and bound in her cabin he’d had a fair amount of time to study her, too. A colony of empty coffee mugs clustered on the desk; bed neatly made, glass case filled with—unbelievably—model ships. The fish tank, an obscene waste of water and space, was empty. The most notable thing in the room was the black tarp stretched over a section of the ceiling, just over the bed.

He had no idea what Shepard saw when she studied him now; he just had to hope it was nothing more enlightening than the absolute dearth of information he’d gleaned from her quarters. Maybe he was a bad detective after all. Or maybe Shepard was  more inscrutable than she looked.

“So.” Shepard had finished her visual interrogation. “I’m dead, and you’re… what? On a different career path? Or just suicidal?”

“Oh, a little of both. You know how it goes.”

“I’m serious,” Shepard said. “How does a CSEC officer end up in the dead space of the Terminus system, stealing red sand from the Blood Pack? Get sick of writing parking tickets?”

Garrus tilted his head, keeping his tone neutral. “You know, I’m not actually all that interested in recounting my life’s story to the glorified merc who tore my ship in half.”

Shepard’s eyes narrowed, though her smile stayed the same—she was deciding, he realized, whether or not to push. “Fair enough,” she said at last. Propping one foot on the table, she nudged his untouched glass of liquor towards him across the table with the toe of her boot. “But I never discuss business sober.”

Unable to think of a better option, Garrus reached out to take it. He didn’t drink. Unease prickled at the base of his fringe. His eyes flicked towards the bed in spite of himself. “And what sort of business is that?”

Shepard followed his gaze, and burst out laughing. “Don’t flatter yourself,” she said at last, wiping a hand down her face to rub her smirk away. “I’m not that kind of girl.”

“Your crew seemed to think otherwise.”

“About three-fourths of my crew don’t know me from my reputation.  They sign on for a raid or two, then take their payoff and run.” She tilted her glass, watching the bead of remaining alcohol traverse the bottom. “Your crew is different. They surrendered to a band of bloodthirsty pirates just because you told them to. That takes more than authority. That’s _trust_.”

“Well, maybe it helps that my crew isn’t made up of bloodthirsty pirates.”

“There’s no need to get touchy. I’m trying to pay you a compliment.” She took a drink; after a moment’s hesitation, Garrus did the same. It probably wasn’t poisoned. She’d poured from the same bottle, and if she wanted to kill him, her pistol was a hair’s-breadth away.

It was still so strange to sit here with her, like the negative image of a familiar photograph. When he blinked, he half expected to see her as he remembered, from their single encounter all those years ago in Dr. Michel’s clinic: her hair cut shorter, her posture military-straight, everything about her suggesting the neat, level edge of a razor. Now she was as jagged as a shard of broken glass.

“So, Vakarian,” she continued, “I could ask you how you did it—how you pulled together eleven badasses with different agendas and turned them into a crime-fighting death squad—but honestly, I don’t really care. I don’t need your charisma. I need bodies. People I can trust.”

For a moment Garrus could only stare at her, his glass almost slipping from his hand. “Are you trying to _recruit_ me?”

Shepard’s grin was instantaneous. “Well, that’s one way to look at it. Your crew and expertise would be useful to me, but I’d settle for your ship and your intel. I mean,” she laughed, “technically I already have you, and your crew, and your ship. I am sort of holding all the bargaining chips, here.”

“You have us imprisoned against our will and you expect us to suddenly decide to join you— for what? Our lives?”

“For a start.” Shepard’s face was still relaxed, but her voice had gone softer. More dangerous.

Garrus couldn’t stop himself—he laughed. “ _No_ ,” he said, enunciating clearly. “That’s my answer, Shepard. No, we won’t join you, or work with you, or help you in any way. You’re criminals. _Monsters_. No better than the scum we’ve spent two years putting in the ground. And if you think we’ll throw away our convictions at the first sign of danger, you clearly don’t know anything about Archangel at all.”

“Careful,” Shepard murmured. She was very still, no longer swirling her glass or shifting her position. “I’d hate for you to make a hasty decision that you end up regretting.” 

“So kill me. But if you expect to threaten me into going against everything I’ve ever fought for, you’re wasting your time.”

Garrus had worked at CSEC a long time, had stared down the worst kinds of people across an interrogation table until they’d broken down and confessed it all. He shouldn’t have felt unnerved while sitting across from a human female with one pistol and a slow, quiet smile. But he was on the wrong side of the table this time. And something told him Shepard was more dangerous than most of the grizzled criminals to pass through his Citadel precinct.

At last she moved, tilting her head slowly to the side. “The thing is, Garrus—you have something I want. You do not have something I _need_. Which means if you force my hand, it is well within my power to not only jettison every member of your crew out the airlock, but to have my ship’s AI broadcast Archangel’s name, occupation, and previous residences, to every merc-gang omnitool in the galaxy.”

She paused, watching his face. Distantly he wondered if she was enjoying this. “I expect your crew has all agreed to sacrifice their lives for the cause. Can your friends and family say the same?”

Garrus’s hand clenched his drinking glass so hard he was amazed it didn’t shatter. He wanted it to. He wanted to dive forward and plunge the broken shards in into every fiery scar on Shepard’s face—but instead he just sat there, helpless, while Shepard dangled his family’s lives over a precipice. 

Then, she smiled. “But I’d really rather not do that,” she said, reaching forward to pour herself another helping of alcohol. “So let’s see if some time to think doesn’t change your answer.”

At Shepard’s brief gesture, the door opened. Garrus almost leapt to his feet to make a run for it on impulse, but the knowledge of how thoroughly he was trapped kept him in place. A couple of Shepard’s crew walked in, clearly waiting on her signal. They paused a short distance away, eyeing him warily. 

“Show our guest to his quarters,” Shepard said, scooping the handcuffs off the table as she stood. “Minimal rations, no visitors. He needs some peace and quiet for contemplation.” She let the cuffs dangle from one finger, raising an eyebrow. “How about it, Archangel? Going to put up a fight this time?”

Garrus stared at Shepard with every fiber of hatred in his body before stiffly offering his wrists. A slow grin dawned on Shepard’s face. “Behind your back. If you’d be so kind.”

Mandibles clenched tightly to his face, Garrus slowly turned his back. He heard Shepard’s crewmates snickering faintly, and closed his eyes. All just a show of power. Shepard proving she could make him bend, before she made him break. Her touch on his wrists was firm, and lingered at the skin between his plates even after the metal clicked into place.

“Think about it, Vakarian,” she said, her words soft against the side of his neck, too low for her crewmates to hear. He could feel the warmth of her body radiating against his back. And then she stepped away, and when her crewmates grabbed him by the arms she had already turned her back. She didn’t glance at him once as he was manhandled out of the room. His glare bored into the back of her head until the door to her cabin slid shut, taking the eerie blue gleam of the fish tanks and the lingering echo of his name with it.


	4. Chapter 4

Shepard didn’t linger in her cabin after they took Vakarian away. She never stayed in her quarters for long, even after they’d covered up that god-awful skylight. It was too dark, too quiet, and Shepard refused to brood. Her fingers toyed with the glass shard of the visor as she made her way to the elevator and tried not to let the tide of memories rise above her head.  

It all came back to her, as soon as she spoke his name. The painfully eager CSEC detective, so desperate to prove himself, to throw away his career to go chasing down mysterious bad guys without the rules and regs to hold him back. Shepard could relate to that feeling. But she wasn’t about to let some rookie kid give up everything on her account. Not even if he was a damn amazing sniper.

Well, it appeared her good intentions hadn’t done him any favors. He’d thrown it all away anyway, and here they were again: only this time, Shepard was the one begging him to join _her_. Ironic, or some bullshit.

Shepard was tired of begging. She’d done her fair share of it, with the Alliance and with Cerberus; she’d begged for people to believe her about the Reapers, then begged them to believe it was _her_ , and the taste of rejection had gone so stale and suffocating in her mouth she couldn’t stand to ask for anything ever again. Not when she could just take it instead.  

So maybe now she knew how Garrus felt, when she’d laughed him off in that Citadel clinic. It didn’t mean she was about to get down on her knees and beg him for his forgiveness and support. Quite the opposite. Her fist closed around the visor’s glass, its edge biting into her palm. She’d break him, if she had to.

The elevator doors opened onto the combat deck, and Shepard made a beeline for the cockpit. Not many crew around; all but essential personnel were working on repairs or guarding the prisoners. As she approached Joker’s chair she slipped the visor glass into her pocket. Out of sight, out of mind.

“Hey, Commander!” Joker called out to her over his shoulder as she came to a stop beside the pilot’s chair. His fingers flew over keys without pause, even as he turned to give her a suggestive grin. “How’d your _interrogation_ go?”

Shepard stared at him blankly. “What?” Joker said. “Come on, I’ve read this one a million times—the sexy pirate captain takes the spoils of her conquest to her cabin, the white billowy shirts come off—erm, not that you’re sexy, Commander. Not that you’re not sexy! I, uh—”

“Joker, stop talking.”

“Right. Sorry, sir. Only, did you still want to hear the ship’s progress report?”

Shepard pointedly held Joker’s gaze as she spoke. “EDI, what’s the ship’s progress report?” Joker mouthed _fair enough_ and turned back to his console.

“I’ve informed our buyer on Illium that our shipment of red sand will not be forthcoming. He felt… strongly on the matter.”

“Cry me a river,” Shepard muttered. Having to work with drug dealers didn’t mean she had to like them. “What’s our new destination?”

“Current market fluctuations suggest that the best option for scrapping Archangel’s ship in this system will be Omega.  Accounting for the damage our engines took, towing Archangel’s derelict cruiser, and avoiding all major travel routes, we should arrive there within three days.”

“Three _days_?” Shepard braced her hand on the command console and let out a slow breath. Jack would not be happy about this. No one would.

“There are other planets with suitable economies where we might also sell salvage, for a reduced price,” EDI offered.

“No. We need the full payoff. The wait will have to be worth it.” Especially if she could use that time to make Archangel see things her way.

“Hold the course,” she said at last. “And give it as much gas as we can afford.”  

“Yes, sir,” Joker said with relish, his hands flying over the keys.

Shepard left them then, heading on impulse to her cabin—God, she was tired. But the thought of sleeping and all it would entail stopped her short. No, she’d do the rounds instead; talk to Mordin about the cross-species knockout gas he’d been perfecting, ask Jacob how the ship’s repairs were coming, stop by Chakwas to inquire about the crew-wide injuries. There was always more to do. Her work, it seemed, would never be done.

But in the meantime, she planned to put every thought of Garrus Vakarian and all the trouble he was causing her as far from her mind as possible.

 

*

 

You could say this much for the Cerberus bugs. It did make spying a hell of a lot easier.

Shepard had stripped them from her cabin, of course, but left all the others in place. Destroyed the broadcasters that relayed the video feeds back to The Illusive Man, and routed them manually to her personal terminal instead. She’d been careful, very careful, to get rid of everything in her personal space; a fact she was glad of when she had stepped into Zaeed’s den of iniquity in the starboard cargo bay, and seen his monitor cycling through a tap of the various security feeds on the ship. But as far as she knew, he was the only one who knew about the bugs, or at least, who knew how to access them.

Well. The only _other_ one.

In her own cabin, she flipped through the feeds. Miranda in the mess hall; Jacob brooding in the armory; a dead zone in Mordin’s lab, because he’d squashed her own planted bugs as easily as he’d squashed Cerberus’s, and she trusted him as much as she was capable of trusting anyone these days. Kelas Tyr at her table in the mess, a small group sitting closer than particularly necessary, and leaning in so she didn’t have to raise her voice. Her implants sprouted from her face like grey fungus, one on each temple, and two more on the sides of her shaved head. Whatever she was saying, the mics couldn’t pick it up. Shepard flipped past the feed. She had bigger concerns right now than Tyr’s clumsy conspiracies. 

In the port cargo hold, half of Garrus’s squad stewed in their own anxiety. It had been two days since their capture, and no trouble so far—but she had EDI keeping a constant eye on them, though of course her eyes were everywhere.

And then, pretending it was of no consequence whatever, Shepard flipped to the feed of the main battery.

Vakarian sat in the corner farthest from the door, his knees bent and his head hanging low. He stayed motionless for a long time, until something changed in him—a jolt that sent him upright as if he’d been shocked, or remembered something important. He strode over to the battery’s main console and hunched over it, as she’d watched him do many times before. His fingers flew over the keys. Like all the times before, his efforts gained him nothing, and he whirled around in a blaze of disgust before pacing back to his corner and sitting down again.

He’d been calm and methodical the first 24 hours, testing the console, checking the walls for weak points, the door for a panel to override. When he’d exhausted those options he walked the perimeter of the room, did weird exercises Shepard had to assume were the turian norm, or simply sat for hours of quiet meditation. As time dragged on he’d taken to pacing, fidgeting, returning to the console again and again, sometimes even trying the exact same combination of buttons. His state of mind clearly fraying.

Exactly what Shepard was waiting for.

She sat back in her chair, still staring at the feed. She didn’t feel _bad_. Hell, she’d done much worse to much better than him. But recognizing his face, like a ghost risen up from a past she’d left behind…

It wasn’t as if they had known each other. Their acquaintance had been short, altogether meaningless—except, that wasn’t quite true. What she’d done and said during their brief acquaintance had meant something to _him_. Jack had described it once, how Shepard seemed to bend the people around her like gravity bends light. “Like a black hole,” Jack had said, raising her flask. “Nothing in the galaxy can resist your pull. That’s why I agreed to follow you on this glorified suicide mission. You know, after the literal one.”

It had been a compliment, and Shepard tried to take it as one. God knew it came in handy, being able to make people do what she needed them to. But it got old, sometimes. She didn’t want to always be the axle around which other people turned; or worse, the wheel on which they were broken.

Fat lot of good that charisma did her, if she couldn’t use it against the one turian she needed to bend to her will. 

Still, it was worrying to look back and wonder whether she had been—what? The final straw? The catalyst that sent Garrus Vakarian spinning away from the safety of his old life? It didn’t matter. His past wasn’t her responsibility, and neither was his future—though she couldn’t help but feel that it was his past which would unlock him to her, a key fitted to all the tumblers within him. He _would_ give way. She would simply prefer not to break the lock.  

She could see the pieces of his old self in the person he’d become, but only as faded impressions; like a reflection in the glass of one of Normandy’s windows, fragments and outlines eaten away by the darkness of space in between. It was the absences that Shepard saw, more than anything.  

What the hell had happened to them both?

“Commander.”

She closed out of the security feed, as if EDI hadn’t known damn well what was on her screen. “Go ahead, EDI.”

“You appear to be acutely interested in the well-being of the prisoner.”

“A lot hinges on whether or not Vakarian decides to cooperate.” If her voice came out slightly more defensive than was justified, EDI did not comment.

“Of course, Commander. In a similar vein, I have some information about turian physiology which might be relevant at this time.” 

Shepard leaned back in her chair, tapping her datapad idly on her crossed knee. “Such as?”

“On average, turians require more social contact than humans in order to remain psychologically healthy. Humans experience this need for social and physical contact as well, to a lesser degree.”

“I’d heard turians don’t mind fraternizing on their own ships,” Shepard said. “What’s your point?”

“Archangel has gone almost two full days without social contact. Data suggests that further isolation could result in detrimental psychological and physiological effects.”

“Oh, come on, EDI. He’s been getting his daily calorie packet, a few days without conversation won’t kill him.”

“My scanners report that his heartrate has been consistently 30% higher than the turian norm for the past twelve hours. I would need analysis of a blood sample to accurately gauge the presence of stress hormones, but given the physiological reaction—”

“Alright, EDI, I get it.” Shepard buried her fingers in her hair and tugged at her scalp. If she’d known how much trouble Archangel was going to be, she’d never have taken his ship in the first place. “Just give me a minute, okay?”

“Of course, Commander.”

The ensuing silence was reassuring, even though logically Shepard knew EDI hadn’t gone anywhere. Resigning herself to the AI’s silent judgement, she pulled up the security feed of the main battery again.


	5. Chapter 5

The sound in the battery was a constant drone, a noise which settled deep into Garrus's bones. It was just about the only company he'd had for the past two days. That was just an estimate, of course; he had no way of measuring the passage of time in this noisy tin can with no windows or clocks. If he'd only had his visor—well, that would suggest a lot of things going much better for him than they were at present.

The first thing he'd done was see if sabotaging the battery was an option, of course, but Shepard wasn't that stupid. The controls were locked out, and there was nothing around he could use to try and override the door lock. There was a special sort of fury that came from being surrounded by useful implements without being able to put a single one to actual use.

His best guess was that they were feeding him two meals a day, based on the constant thrum of hunger that vibrated in his chest at a similar frequency to the battery itself. He'd eaten five times since they shut him in here with a portable toilet and stiff blanket, a handful of ration packs tossed through a narrow gap in the door without comment or conversation, food that tasted like it had gone stale before he’d joined CSEC. He supposed he should have been grateful they had dextro food on board; he supposed he should be grateful to be alive at all.

He wasn't. He was hungry, frustrated, with only the assurances of the ex-Commander Shepard that his squad wouldn't be killed unless he really ticked her off. He had to believe she would keep them alive, as bargaining chips if nothing else. But would her crew follow her orders if Sidonis tried something else? His squad weren't the type to sit idle and hope for rescue. They were just as likely to get themselves killed as Shepard was to kill them outright.

Spirits, he was tired. By the second night, the drone of the battery was so loud he could hardly close his eyes. His skin crawled. He was in a bad sort of place and he knew it, and worse of all, he knew _Shepard_ knew it, too.

So when the door slid fully open at last and Commander Shepard stepped in alone and unarmored, without even a pistol on her hip—well, Garrus's first instinct was to lunge at her with everything he had. Fortunately, he was exhausted enough that all he did was stand to face her.

"How are the accommodations?" Shepard said with a grin, and Garrus hated himself just a little bit for the flicker of relief that moved through him at the sound of a person’s voice. Did she know that isolation was one of the most psychologically strenuous things you could do to a turian?

Of course she did. That was precisely why she was doing it.

So he shrugged nonchalantly, folding his arms over his chest while keeping the muscles loose, ready for quick action. "Oh, can't complain." He glanced at the blanket spread out over a corner of the floor. "The bed's a little hard, but for the price? Five stars."

"Anyone ever tell you you're a smart-ass, Vakarian?"

"Only constantly."

Despite the feigned lightness in his tone, Garrus's body tensed as Shepard ambled up to brace her hands on the battery control panel. She stared into the red glow of the battery itself for a while; he could see nothing but her outline against it.

"Peaceful in here," she said at last.

"Something tells me you didn't come down here for the ambiance."

"You're right. I came down here for you." She turned around and leaned on the railing, a smirk tugging at her pliable human features. She reached into her pocket, and Garrus almost took a step back—but she pulled out another ration pack, and held it out to him. "Hungry?"

He really, really was. "Not really."

"Yes you are." She tossed it, and he caught it on impulse. "How are the symptoms?"

So much for Shepard's feigned ignorance. "Not nearly as bad as you might hope."

"Oh, don't be dramatic. If it makes you feel better, I didn't know about turian socialization needs until EDI clued me in. I don't plan on torturing you."

"No, you just plan on threatening me with the death of everyone I care about."

Shepard tilted her head. The smile remained fixed on her features. "I suppose this means you haven't changed your tune."

"You can lock me in here for months if you want. I'll never work for a criminal despot."

Shepard sighed, reaching up to rub at her eye with a knuckle. “You’re focusing too much on what _I_ want, Garrus. What about what you stand to gain?”

“I’m having trouble seeing the benefit in—what do you humans say?—selling you my soul.”

“Ah, but when you sell your soul you always get something in return.” Her grin widened. "You and your squad have the skills and the drive, but lack the resources to make a real dent in the crime population. With me, you'd have three ships instead of one."

"And you expect me to believe that you'd just volunteer your ships for whatever mission I need them for."

"If it involves collecting the kind of red sand you vented into space a few days ago? Damn right."

If Shepard knew anything about turian social cues, she might have understood that the flex in his mandibles was nothing like a smile. "You think I haven't heard the exact same spiel a dozen times before, from murderers and thieves ten times worse than you? You're hardly the first person to try and buy me off with promises of how much better things would be if I just stopped doing what I was doing."

"Hey." Shepard raised a menacing finger. "I resent the implication that there are better thieves and murderers than me.”  

“And that,” Garrus said, leaning back against the wall, “is exactly why I will never work for you.”

“You really are a stubborn bastard, aren’t you?”

“It’s why I’m good at what I do.”

“Fair enough.” Shepard’s tone was as light as ever. As if she was having a normal conversation, not trying to strong-arm a turian vigilante into joining her pirate crew. “I can’t force you to join me against your will. You’d be more of a liability than an asset. But I _will_ have your intel, Garrus. Whether you’re with me to use it or not.”

He held her gaze. It wasn’t difficult—her eyes were compelling. “No.”

She pushed off the railing to approach him. In the battery’s dim light, her scars glowed like cities seen from orbit, mapping across a dark landscape. That same fire flashed in her eyes as she stepped into his space; amazing, he thought distantly, how an unarmed, unarmored human lacking several inches of height on him could still wield her presence like a threat.

“Consider this.” Her voice was softer in the private space between them. “I have literally everything you hold dear, right in the palm of my hand. Your squad. Your ship. Your _name_.” To emphasize the final syllable she tapped two fingers into the center of his chest. Her eyes stayed on his. “The question you should be asking yourself right now isn’t ‘how can I come out of this on top’—it’s ‘ _how much am I willing to lose_.’”

As she spoke, the glow around her eyes flared red as a dying star. Turian mythology had not equipped him well for superstition. But he’d listened to Kallan on the long stakeouts when the old batarian would read aloud from his holy books to stay awake, tales half as old as the stone tablets they’d originally been carved on. Stories of dark things waiting beyond the fire’s protective light, things that lay in the moon-shadow between the sand dunes with eyes that gleamed like heatsinks just before the final bullet.  

Shepard was, he reflected distantly, a very easy person to fear. But he refused to be afraid. He’d seen her before she was a savior, a myth, a martyr, a madwoman—he’d seen her as an Alliance Commander, human and fallible. He could still see the outline of that person in her now, though its edges were bleeding and rough.

So he forced himself to remain calm, as he leaned in with the air of a conspirator with a juicy secret. “You know what I think?” Shepard’s face remained blank. “I think you’re full of it.”

Shepard laughed, but Garrus barreled on. “You aren’t going to kill my crew. You’re sure as hell not going to put my family in danger. You strut around like this badass criminal, but I’ve _seen_ real monsters. You’re a fraud. A jaded Alliance drop-out at best, and a malfunctioning Cerberus clone at worst, with gruesome legacy you’ve got no stomach to live up to.” He tilted his head. “So you can threaten me all you want. I’m not afraid of ghost stories.”

Shepard turned away, taking a few steps back from him and dragging her fingers through her hair. A brief, disbelieving pang of triumph shot through Garrus’s chest; until he realized the sigh she heaved was exasperated, not upset. “So you don’t believe what you’ve heard about me.”

“Not even a little.”

“Hmm.” She turned back around. “Normally I’d say that’s smart. Take everything you hear with a  grain of salt, and all that. Unfortunately, in this particular case, you are in fact completely wrong.”

She clasped her hands behind her back and began to pace. “Were you close with your father, Garrus? You followed him into CSEC, but we both know how that ended. Still, you look like him. In the photos in his file, at least. He seems to be enjoying his retirement in the Uinan province on Palaven. Apparently he’s taken up gardening.”

Garrus’s hands slowly closed into fists at his side.

“Then there’s the sister,” Shepard continued, her steps measured and slow. “ _Solana_. Pretty name. Doing quite well for herself in the turian military, on the _Kallis_. It must have been a lot to live up to when you were younger.”

Every detail she dropped about his family was another turn of a screw into his plates. He couldn’t tell her to stop, not without capitulating. Spirits, he hadn’t even known Solana had been reassigned from her position on the _Syre._

“And then,” Shepard continued, coming to a halt in front of him at last, “there’s your mother. In and out of treatment facilities for the past three years; hospitalized in a long-term care facility for the past five months. Deteriorating quickly, from the reports I’ve read. Have you spoken to her lately?”

Garrus turned his face away, unable to stop the sharp, agonized spike in his subvocals. Shepard, for what little credit it gave her, did not seem to be enjoying this. He didn’t care.

“No,” she decided, tilting her head to stare into his face even as he averted it. “You haven’t.”

“I get it,” Garrus said tightly. “You’ve done your research.”

“The thing is, Vakarian, I don’t think you _do_ get it. And I’m concerned that the only way to hammer the nature of your exact circumstances into your head is to call in a favor to a certain drell I know, who could easily make his way into the zero-security facility where your mother is slowly dying, and pay my respects.”

“You wouldn’t,” Garrus said, his voice rough with fury.  

Shepard’s eyebrows shot up. “Talk like that, Garrus, is exactly why I have to.”

Without another word she turned on her heel, heading for the door. “My friend is a professional. He’ll make it quick, painless—it’ll look like she simply succumbed to her disease. Who knows, your father and sister might even be relieved—"

Garrus pushed off the wall like a springboard and slammed into Shepard’s back, knocking her into the door before it could open. In an instant he had her trapped, face shoved against the metal and her arms pinned in front of her by the weight of their bodies. No gun. No armor. No backup. He reached around her neck and slid his talons under her chin before he even had to think about what he was doing, her pulse thundering into the tips of his talons. Her breath came in short gasps that pushed up against his chest, struggling for room to breathe. His own breaths came shallow, anger like a vice around his lungs. Sick, awful glee surged through him. He didn’t always enjoy his kills, but this time—Spirits, this time—

Muffled against the door and half-choked by the pressure on her throat, Shepard spoke: “I wouldn’t do that.”

Her voice was totally calm. Bored, almost, even as his talons pressed harder against her jugular. That was the only thing that made him hesitate. He couldn’t see her face, could only stare incredulously at the side of her neck where it wasn’t hidden by her fuzzy human fringe. His mandibles twitched in fury. It would be so easy. One quick jerk and Shepard's life would spill out over the battery floor.

…And then, of course, her crew would have no reason to keep him and his crew alive. No doubt she would have a dead-man’s switch about his family, as well. If he killed her, he had no way of knowing they would be safe. That was, of course, the entire reason she was willing to waltz in here unarmed in the first place.

Slowly, he stepped back, and let his talons fall away from the tender flesh of her neck.

She turned around as soon as she had room, rubbing at the two red dots blooming under the corner of her jaw. He stared at a spot on the door five inches to the left of her face, unable to meet her eye. The anger in his gut soured, made him want to gag. She had him. As simple as that. He felt her eyes boring into his as he struggled to find the strength to beg.

“Commander.”

The voice came from somewhere in the room, cool and pleasant and utterly out of place. Shepard glanced at the ceiling. “We’re good here, EDI.”

“Of course, Shepard. This interruption is unrelated to your conversation with Archangel.”

“Well, then it better be good.” Shepard’s eyes drove into his. He wanted to retreat, to turn away so he wouldn’t have to wait for the smug, sickly triumph to bloom over her face; but something held him in place, and the triumph never came.

“Contact on our nav screens, Commander. A large ship with no escort, moving at sublight speeds. Based on analysis of the ship’s structure, the content of their subspace messages, and the data we acquired from Archangel’s ship computer, there is good reason to believe the ship is the _Acheron_.”

Garrus froze. Shepard’s gaze sharpened with laser focus. “Define ‘good reason’, EDI.”

“Specifically, a 95% chance.”

“Well I’ll be damned. What the hell is the Blue Sun’s prize warship doing out here?” Shepard was already turning around. “Radio Jack and tell her to put a boarding party together. I want the _Bitch’s_ guns hot for when the _Normandy_ drops out of stealth, and if we’re lucky we’ll catch them unawares—”

The door slid open, and Shepard made to leave him behind. Before she could cross the threshold Garrus caught her arm in a grip that wouldn’t be brushed off. “Wait.”

She glanced between him and his hand, but he didn’t let her go. “If you’re planning on offering me total surrender, we can handle the details when I get back.”

“No. I’m coming with you.”

Her eyes narrowed. “Why?”

Garrus sighed, his subvocals crackling. “Look, we both know you’ve already won. You’ll get your intel, in exchange for my crew—and my family’s—safety. But there’s information on that ship that I’m going to need no matter how this ends between us, and I’m the only one who can get it.”

“You have a death wish, Vakarian? We’re going into this hot as hell, there’s no place for an unarmed noncombatant—”

“Then give me my gun back.”

Shepard laughed, the outburst more out of disbelief than amusement. “Seriously? You remember the part where you tried to kill me literally thirty seconds ago? Like hell I’m going to just hand you a weapon and hope you don’t take out half my squad—”

“If I wanted you dead, I’d have killed you thirty seconds ago.” Garrus held her gaze. The anger wasn’t gone, and neither was the fear, but exhilaration carried them higher; like oil on the surface of rising water. “I’m not asking you to trust me. I don’t even care if you give me a gun. But if it’s intel you want, that ship is the jackpot _._ The name and location of every Blue Sun base in the Terminus system, files on their leaders, ship movements… I’ve been hunting her for months, gathering access codes—”

“Then give me the codes.”

“No can do, Shepard.” He flicked a mandible, a parody of her habitual lopsided smile. There was no trace of it on her face now. “If you want that intel, I’m getting it too. That’s the deal.”

Fascinating, to watch the muscles in Shepard’s jaw twitch. Fury stirred beneath the red heat of her scars like ground tremors. He could practically follow the line of her thoughts, as clear and straight as the path of a bullet—only he knew how to get the intel off that ship’s drives, and she didn’t have the time to make him tell her.

Though the anger written across her face didn’t so much as flicker, when she spoke, her voice was level. “Follow me,” she said, and together they stepped out of his cell.


	6. Chapter 6

From the minute the door slid open to the armory and Jacob turned to see Garrus at Shepard’s side, his pistol was in his hand and was pointed in between Vakarian's eyes. "Shepard," he said through gritted teeth, "what is he—"

"Stand down, marine,” she said, stepping past Jacob to the special arms locker behind him.

He glanced between her and Garrus, who was lingering near the door with his long arms crossed over his chest, looking—well. The way turians looked. "What the hell is going on here?"

"Archangel is going to accompany us on this mission," Shepard said as she keyed in the security code. The weapon locker doors folded open without a whisper, kept immaculately oiled by Jacob's much-appreciated obsessiveness. Many of the guns were missing already, the crew already gearing up; her eyes were drawn immediately to the long, bulky length of Garrus's sniper rifle, its barrel collapsed, still smeared with some soot from the fire on his ship. Clearly Jacob's attention to detail didn't extend to giving enemy weapons a wipe down.

Shepard pulled it from its rack, checked the clip and the heat sink, and without giving herself time to think about what a colossally bad idea this might be, flipped it around to offer it to Garrus. "From what I've heard, you know how to use this thing."

Garrus stared between her and his gun with an expression like he expected her to turn it around and shoot him the second he reached for it. Not like that would have been totally out of character for Shepard. Maybe that's why he kept his arms at his side, wary and waiting, before finally stepping forward to take his rifle.

He did the same cursory examination she did, except in the same amount of time he had practically field-stripped the gun and put it back together again. Clearly, he knew his weapon. Out of the corner of her eye she could see that Jacob still had his pistol unholstered, both hands on the grip, though he'd warily pointed it to the ground.

"Just like that?" Garrus said.

"There's no 'just' about it," Shepard said. "I want that intel, you want your crew to make it out of this alive. So let's make this simple and help each other out, shall we?" She tossed him an extra heat sink before turning back to the door. "Jacob, dig up Archangel's fancy suit of armor, and make sure he's assigned to my squad. We go in in five."

"Aye, Commander," Jacob said tersely. Behind her she recognized the sound of Jacob's pistol sliding back into its holster. Shepard stepped forward, the door in front of her opening—and found herself face to face with none other than Kelas Tyr.

“Shepard,” Tyr said, an ugly grin spreading across her face. Of course, every facial expression was ugly when it came to Tyr, in large part to the mechanical implants that colonized her face. Her eyes were two flat metal disks, completely metal, with nothing but a little black hole in the circle for a pupil; they were fixed on Shepard’s face with the utter stillness of a machine. “Just the woman I was looking for.”

“I’m a bit busy at the moment, Tyr,” Shepard said lightly. “Mercs to shoot, and all.”

She moved to step past, but Tyr shifted to block her path—the woman was already in her armor, and its bulk left no room to slip past. She folded her arms across her chest with a clank, showing metal teeth. “Well now that you mention it, Shepard, that’s exactly why I wanted to find you. Me and the boys sure would love to come along.”

Shepard leaned to the side to glance at the two armored figures standing behind Tyr. They had their helmets on, but EDI would have already identified them. When she turned back to Tyr, her expression was bored. “No can do, Tyr. I’ve already picked my squad.” And it was composed only of people Shepard trusted not to steal that intel and sell it to competitors, but Tyr didn’t need to hear that.

The grin on Tyr’s face didn’t falter, but it did become more of a grimace. And that was the exact point when Shepard heard Garrus shift, and Tyr’s eyes locked onto him like heat seeking missions. “Now hang on one minute,” she said mildly. “Unless my eyes are malfunctioning, you’ve got the prisoner out of lockup with a big-ass gun in his hands.”

“We need his expertise with the Blue Sun,” Shepard snapped.

Tyr scratched the back of her head. “Well, see, it just seems odd to me. Taking an enemy into combat and leaving your friends to sit it out. Need I _remind_ you, it’s been a good long while since me or mine had a chance to see any action—”

“ _Yours_?” Shepard took a step closer. Tyr’s smile disappeared then, her eyes locked onto Shepard. There were tiny red lights inside of them—a targeting system, probably. “You’d do well to remember that there’s not one person, databyte, or _paperclip_ that isn’t mine, and mine alone, for as long as it’s on my ship. So when I say that you and your scary friends back there,” she said with a dismissive gesture over Tyr’s shoulder, “are going to de-kit and sit on your asses and watch the show from the observation deck, I expect you to _thank_ me for the opportunity to show how eager you are to follow orders.”

Tyr’s face was mere inches from hers. Not a single flicker of movement went through it as they stared each other down—until the smile returned, slow and greasy and utterly unconvincing. “Of course, Commander,” she said, tilting her head in a parody of a bow. Her eyes darted to Garrus as she did. “ _Thank you_.”

Without another word Tyr turned on her heel, the two armored goons trailing after her. Shepard waited until she disappeared around the corner to slowly let out a breath. Damn. If Tyr thought she could waltz in here and _demand_ to be taken on a mission then things might just be even worse than Shepard had thought—

“Domestic troubles?”

She turned around to shoot Garrus a glare. He was watching her _very_ closely; and of course, he’d have to be incredibly stupid not to realize this little tableau had revealed one of her greatest weaknesses. Luckily he had no way of capitalizing on it. Yet.

“Nothing you need to worry about, Archangel.” Before stepping through the open door herself, Shepard paused. "Oh, and one more thing." She tilted her head, smiling an unfriendly smile. "If you hurt a single member of my crew, half of your squad will be trying to figure out how to breathe in a vacuum. If you're still alive, you get to find out what happens to the _other_ half."

After a moment, Garrus nodded stiffly. "Like I said, Shepard. If I planned on killing you, I'd have done it."

"Just what I like to hear." Winking, she turned and let the doors close behind her. With luck, he and Jacob would manage not to blow each other's heads off before they even set foot on the Blue Sun ship.

 

*

 

She hadn't been afraid.

 _Really_ , she hadn't. Shepard never would have walked into the battery unarmed and unescorted if she'd believed for one second that Vakarian was a threat to her. He was too smart, too levelheaded to throw his crew's lives away for the brief satisfaction of seeing her die. She had him, and he knew it, and that was the only security she needed.

But for a second—just _one_ second—when he'd had her shoved against the door with his talons pressing into her artery, something inside of her had faltered. The blow had knocked the breath from her lungs, his chest squeezing her against the door, stars bursting behind her eyes as she fell—no. Not fell. She was standing in her ship, surrounded on all sides by air and metal and plated hull, and _she could breathe_. She made herself draw in the first breath, then the second, centered herself on the present moment like a top balancing the faster it spun.

She wasn't above Alchera. The stars receded from her vision.

Garrus, to the best of her observational knowledge, had not noticed anything. After all, being slightly shaky after 250 pounds of turian threatened to peel your throat like an orange was pretty much par for the course. But as the elevator doors closed around her and she began the ascent to her cabin, Shepard leaned against the wall, closed her eyes, and tried to resist the urge to slam her fist into the metal wall.

The nanites would repair the bones in a matter of hours, of course, but  going into combat with broken fingers would be stupid even for her.

Instead, she just focused on breathing. Reminding herself with every breath that she _could_ breathe, there was air going into her lungs, damn it, no matter what her brain was telling her—

Hadn't it been long enough—shouldn't she be able to leave it behind? She still had to avoid the observation decks, keeping her visits to the bridge brief and perfunctory as she kept her eyes firmly on Joker's face, Joker's hands on the control, anything but the vast starry nothingness breaking over the nose of her ship like ocean water.

At one point, the Main Battery had been her place of refuge, buried in the center of her ship like its red, thrumming heart. Plus it was one of the few places on the Normandy that didn't have windows.

She'd made sure to keep her issues under wraps. EDI had done her the favor of looping the security footage while she was in there, so that even Zaeed was none the wiser. The only person who really knew anything about it was Jack, and Jack was—well, Jack. Not a friend, exactly, but possibly the person Shepard trusted most in the galaxy. And that trust went only as far as the edge of the _Normandy's_ hull.

The elevator door hissed, and Shepard opened her eyes. When she held her hands in front of her face she could just barely control the shakes. Her breath came out in a shuddering gasp, and she pushed off the wall to make her way to her private loadout. She would put on her armor, grab her guns, and shoot some mercs so full of holes you couldn't tell which parts went where. Fumbling slightly, she ducked down to her bedside table and pulled out the same ryncol she and Vakarian had shared earlier. A couple swallows of that and her hands didn't feel so shaky. The burning was in her stomach, not her lungs.

She stared at her suit, waiting silently in its locker. Above her the black tarp sagged over the bed, hiding the sight of what waited behind it but not the knowledge of what lay beyond. Shepard could see it when she closed her eyes. Only in her dreams, the cosmos rushing by were always tinged as red as if the ship were plummeting into the atmosphere.

"Showtime," Shepard muttered, and went to gear up.


	7. Chapter 7

The Normandy swooped onto the Acheron like a varren on a pyjack. The Blue Suns’ ship was big, loaded with the kind of firepower that could rip the _Normandy_ in half if the great hulking ship was nimble enough to catch them. As it was, Joker handled the ship like a kite fighting the force of the winds, diving and turning in graceful arcs as Jack's smaller fighter sent barrages straight into the _Acheron's_ joints. It was impressive. Watching the skill with which Shepard’s pilot handled the ship, Garrus felt a little better about the fact that he’d lost.

Garrus stood to the right of Shepard's command chair, his sniper rifle slung over his back. It felt good to be in his armor again; good to be out of that dull red cell, good to savor the swell of battle fever rising in his veins. He could almost forget that he was still shackled to Shepard as surely as if she'd put a manacle around his ankle. Maybe he'd get a moment off this ship, but if he made one wrong move or tried to escape, his crew—and his family—would suffer for it.

He needed this. Holding back from killing Shepard had taken every ounce of control he had. Now he was going to turn that energy into something almost as satisfying: killing mercs.

"Easy, Joker!" Shepard snapped as a blast from the Acheron's canons arced just over their bow.

"I know what I'm doing, Commander!" the pilot shouted, his eyes locked on the controls.

"Mr. Moreau, if I may: the margin of human error is generally agreed to be within .5%, and the timing of that previous canon blast was approximately _.3%_ —"

"Can someone mute her?" Joker growled, as the Normandy bucked and rolled. Garrus could feel the vibrations of the ship's guns rumbling in his chest. Flames exploded where they made contact with the _Acheron_ , put out just as quickly as the air inside vented.

"I am blocking their distress signals, Commander," the voice—had Shepard called it EDI?—stated. "However, it will not be long before the lack of communication with their nearby outpost arouses suspicion, and a scouting party is dispatched to investigate."

Shepard's fingers gripped the arms of her command chair. "How long?"

"At top speed, the outpost is twenty eight minutes from our current position. I believe they will begin sending out troops within ten."

"Then we'd better make this quick." Shepard jammed a button on the dial on her chair. "Jack, let's clean this up and get going."

"Fuck yeah!" the voice from the Normandy's comms crowed, and the smaller ship flipped around to make a run straight at the Acheron's engines. Slower, the _Normandy_ followed. The _Bitch_ 's attacks were like blue flames blooming over the Acheron's rear shields as Jack's ship hammered through them, getting closer and closer until Garrus was certain, with equal parts horror and satisfaction, that the small ship was about to obliterate itself on the Acheron's shields. Seconds before impact, the blue light flickered away, and Jack rolled to miss them. The Normandy swept in on her tail, firing two short bursts into the engines and pulling up to let the explosion roll beneath her belly. Instantly, the Acheron went dark.

"Boo-yeah!" Joker shouted, taking his hands off the console for the first time Garrus could remember to triumphantly punch the air. "That's how we do it!"

"That's how _I_ do it," Jack said from the comms. "You guys are just my cleanup crew."

"Oh, give me a break! You couldn’t find any pilot in this quadrant who could pull off—"

"Enough of the pissing contest." Shepard stood. In her armor, she was a different person; no more cocked hips and lounging on walls. She was rigid, hard, impenetrable. Staring at her now, it was difficult for Garrus to believe that less than an hour ago he'd had her pinned against the door with his talons pressed into her neck. She'd felt so—soft. He'd never been in such close contact with an unarmored human before. Still, the realization was slightly uncomfortable.

"It will take them approximately twenty minutes to restore engine power," EDI stated. "Approximately five to bring back the lights."

Shepard grinned. "Then let's go give them a reason to be scared of the dark. Joker, get us docked."

 

*

 

The belly of the _Acheron_ contained only what light the flashing emergency panels gave off in spurts. Blue like blood, leaving colorless afterimages in their wake. Garrus longed for his visor, with its detailed spatial awareness programming and rudimentary night vision, but in the meantime he made do with what little he could see.

Shepard took point, sliding through the dark as if she belonged there. She wasn't wearing a visor, or any kind of augmentation that Garrus could see at all; there would be time to wonder exactly what her bio-augmented eyes were capable of later. For now he was busy marveling that she had stepped in front of him so willingly, even when he held his loaded sniper rifle firmly in his hands, barrel extended. It would be so easy—but of course, he couldn't. She knew that as well as he did.

Her biotic partner, Jack, was going in from a different entry point; they'd meet up in the control room. Shepard broke them up into teams of three, taking Garrus and the man from the armory—Jacob—with her. Garrus didn't miss that Jacob's pistol had a tendency to list towards him, as if never wanting to keep Garrus too far from his sights.

Detached wires and pipes spewed air and sparks in the places where the damage was worst. No enemies so far; just the sounds of distant alarms and the hiss of releasing pressure, the ship’s internal bleeding.

"Thought you said this was gonna be a party, Shepard." Jack's voice was barely subdued over the comms.

"They just need a little help to get things rolling," Shepard said. Garrus could hear the grin in her voice.

At once, her fist shot up a motion every soldier of every species recognized— _hold_. A second later Garrus heard it—loud voices over the hiss of air, shouting orders. For the first time since stepping out of the airlock Shepard glanced at him over her shoulder. She showed her teeth. That was a human gesture Garrus had never quite gotten used to—turians had no frontal teeth, and those they did were only displayed so openly as a threat. He didn't exactly think that Shepard was any different.

"Let's see what you're made of, Archangel," she said, and stepped out from around the corner.

Her bullets flew first, and they flew true. He and Jacob could only rush to follow her as her assault rifle painted rows of bullet holes on the hallway where the mercs were ambushed, barely able to reach for their guns as Shepard barreled towards them. No biotics—that was Jack's forte. Shepard was pure momentum and mass, not to mention bullets.

Garrus took cover behind some fallen debris and immediately sighted down his barrel, dropping two mercs as they rounded the distant corner before they even understood there was a fight happening. Jacob was hard on Shepard's heels with the ease of practice. They anticipated each other's position, knew exactly when to cover each other and when to fall back; it was a dance, of a sort, though Jacob was slower with his bullets, more cautious. Slightly off tempo. Garrus's scope slid over them with a vague sense of wistfulness before he took out another merc trying to scope him out over the edge of his cover.

They decimated the team of mercs in seconds, leaving only bodies behind. Garrus took a deep breath as he stepped out from cover, breathing in the smell of hot metal and burning clothes. He used to feel guilty for the satisfaction he took in seeing bad people go down. Not anymore, and especially not today.

Shepard slid a new heat sink into her assault rifle with a sound like snapping bone. "Not bad, Archangel," she said, her scars flashing red alongside her grin. "Maybe the rumors about you were half-right, after all."

"Well, based on the rumor that I killed thirty Eclipse soldiers with just two heat sinks and an omnitool blade..." He shrugged. "More like three-fourths right, seeing as it was forty."

"You're full of shit. I'll bet it was two rookies and a sickly vorcha, and you missed half the shots you took."

"Find me some more mercs and I'll gladly prove you wrong."

"Shepard, is this the part where I remind you that our timetable doesn't allow time for flirting?" From the dully exasperated tone of Jacob's voice, reeling Shepard back in the heat of battle was second only to his duty as armorer.

"I always leave time for a good flirt," she said, shooting Jacob a wink as she moved down the corridor—and then glancing at Garrus with the same mischievous glint in her eyes. He couldn't be sure whether it was directed at him, or whether it lingered from her comment to Jacob.

He shook his head, ejecting his rifle's heat sink and forcing himself to focus. What was he even doing, bantering with her like she was his squad-mate instead of his jailer? He wasn't interested in her camaraderie; no matter how easy it was to slip into.

Shepard herself was a slippery slope. He'd seen it on the monitors, the interviews and the speeches before she died; she was dangerously easy to like, all bravado with a glint of genuine caring, a kind of insufferable callousness on a bedrock of undeniable skill that made you want to prove yourself to her, to catch her eye and then make her think twice about dismissing you so easily—

A patter of assault rifle fire shook him out of his thoughts, and by the time he had his rifle against his shoulder the merc who'd come running out from the door a few feet ahead was dead at their feet.

"I take it back," Shepard said as she stepped over the body. "Maybe they were only a quarter right."

This time he didn't bother to defend himself. Just clenched his mandibles against his teeth and resolved to focus on anything that wasn't in his scopes.

The next time gunfire broke out was over the comms, followed by Jack's demonic whoops and the frazzled reverberations of her biotics gone tinny in his earpiece. From somewhere not far ahead he thought he heard the crunches.

"That’s three more on my count, Shepard!" Jack crowed. Shepard swore under her breath, which only made Jack laugh harder. "Better luck next time, jackass. That'll teach you to go dragging some rookie vigilante after you."

The door in front of them opened, revealing the short hallway between them and the control room—and the three Blue Suns troopers stooped over a metal canister, their fingers tangled in the wires leading into it. Two of them raised their guns as the third reached for something on the floor.

Garrus had never been a particularly good detective, but neither was he a bad one. He reacted to the sight of those mercs not on instinct alone, but on instinct greased and polished and set on the tracks of CSEC training, until action surged through him as unstoppable as a mag train from the second he saw the cylinder sitting on its side right in front of the door. Right where someone could send it rolling into the room beyond with a single kick. He brought down the merc in the center as bullets exploded around him, Jacob and Shepard taking out the other two seconds later. His target slumped to the floor with a new hole in his head.

After a tense beat of silent Shepard stepped forward. "Shooting the unarmed man first, huh," she said with a glance at Garrus's kill. "Interesting strategy."

"The unarmed man who was about to arm a detonator that would have blasted everything in that control room to the consistency of red sand." Garrus fell to one knee by the cylinder, popped open the keypad and tapped the buttons to neutralize it. That done, he ripped the detonator out. At Shepard's look, he shrugged. "Can't get intel if it's vaporized."

"How did you know it was a bomb?" Jacob said.

Garrus glanced at Jacob. "I have some experience with this kind of thing."

Shepard said nothing more, but he had a feeling she was going to go take a closer look at his history in CSEC. Or, well, maybe not. He hadn't impressed her so much as made her think twice, and _it wasn't like he wanted to impress her, anyhow._

"Jack, the 'rookie vigilante' just saved you and your entire crew from turning into ground beef," she said as the doors slid open, revealing the team from the other ship already hard at work on the computers.

Jack, who showed more interest in tugging heat sinks off the corpses of dead mercs than sniffing out whatever precious information the computers held, glanced at the cylinder standing in the open doorway and shrugged. "I could have handled it with a biotic shield."

"Uh huh. Let's test that theory next time." Shepard stepped up to the central computer console, shouldering aside the human who'd been working on it before. "Jack, take your team and form a perimeter around this room. I count four separate entryways for a fresh squad of mercs to catch us unawares, and God knows how many more of those explosives they have here. Jacob, go with her."

Immediately Jacob's eyes locked on Garrus. "Commander, I don't think—"

"I didn't ask you to think, soldier. In fact, I don't remember _asking_ you to do anything."

She didn't even look at him. After a moment of gearing himself up to argue, Jacob deflated.

"Aye, Commander," he said stiffly, and followed Jack's squad as they left the room.

Then she glanced over her shoulder at Garrus.

"I didn't bring you along just for the eye candy, Vakarian. Hop to it."

He stepped forward and lay his fingers on the console, taking a steadying breath. There was no time to wonder what was going to happen to him or his ship or his squad after Shepard got what she wanted from him. For now, there was only this: the job he'd been planning for six months, and all the further hits on Blue Sun targets waiting just beyond the intel at his fingertips.

Unfortunately, the firewall was very sophisticated. That was what happened when you had money to spare. But Garrus had come prepared.

He punched in the codes from memory; he hadn't even saved them to his omnitool, for fear that someone might be able to hack it. One by one the cyber defenses fell away, and the Blue Sun's operations opened up to him like a body on a morgue table.

"Is this going to take much longer?"

Garrus's subvocals spiked into truly peevish ranges, which were lost on Shepard's human hearing. "Criminal gangs don't make it easy to download their entire database, you know. There's checks, double checks, passwords for opening it, codes for downloading it, safety trips that will delete everything if you don't catch them first—"

"Alright, Vakarian. I get it, you're a genius."

In the reflection from one of the panels he could see Shepard behind him, leaning back with her arms crossed over her chest, staring a hole into the back of his head.

"You learn about bombs at CSEC?" she said.

"You know, as easy as I make this look, a degree of concentration is involved—"

"Stuff it, Vakarian. It's a simple question."

His fingers paused on the keys, but only for a brief moment. There was no time for hesitations now. "Yes. But I learned more about them on Omega."

"Omega," Shepard mused. Exactly where they were heading now. "Figures. Even I hate that criminal shithole."

Garrus couldn't help himself. He scoffed. "Seems like it would be just your speed."

"I'm an opportunist, not a psychopath" She paused. Her reflection tilted its head, growing warped. "Well, most days."

"Omega’s a good place to be either. But mostly it's a good place to be dead."

"And yet that was the first place you ended up after ditching CSEC, if the rumors are to be believed."

"I think we've already established that they generally shouldn't be." Lines of code flicked by the screen. He was getting close. And yet his eyes flicked more often to the figure in the reflection, though she was only a dark outline.

"You know, I don't see the harm in you telling me how you got into this line of work."

"What, breaking merc gang codes? It's not that hard, as long as you spend six months chasing down leads and have a good head for numbers."

"Not the codes. I mean _this."_ A flicker in the reflection as Shepard made a vague gesture that bled off the edge of the terminal. "I mean, you had a good thing going for you back on the Citadel, you were clearly good at your job—"

"I'm sorry," Garrus said, putting his hands against the console to shoot a dark look at Shepard over his shoulder. "Are you _complimenting_ me?"

It was harder to meet Shepard's eyes when they weren’t just a warped reflection. Still, he held her gaze. She didn't smile. "Saren was three different jigsaw puzzles mixed together with half the pieces missing, and somehow you put it all together anyway. That's good detective work."

"I don't know what a jigsaw puzzle is." He forced himself to turn back to the screens, and this time he didn't even glance at her reflection. There was no time for this. The Blue Sun reinforcements would be here any minute, and they still didn't have the intel.

He wasn't going to ask. He _wasn't_. Better to forget it, to move on as he'd done for the past two years, to ignore the splinter festering beneath his fringe as it worked its way deeper into his head—

"Still," he said mildly, and _oh, Spirits, he was doing this_. "Apparently it wasn't good enough to earn me a spot on your squad."

A short, harsh laugh from behind him. He didn't let his shoulders tighten, no matter how they wanted to. "Are you really still holding onto that?"

"I'm not holding onto anything. It's just a thing that happened between us. The _only_ thing that happened between us."

His typing slowed down. One to go, and he'd have what he'd been waiting for. But the silence from behind him was building like a thundercloud, and he found the tension in his subvocals rising to meet it.

"It was nothing personal, Vakarian."

"I know."

"Do you? Because it seems important to you."

"I just wanted to _do_ something." It slipped out before he could bite it back, the words so laden with weakness and naïveté that he practically felt his revulsion rising the back of his throat to follow them.

"You had a lot going for you," she said at last. "Good job. Good connections. Obviously going places. The only places the people around me tend to go are home in a body bag."

Garrus remembered the news feeds. Footage of the _Normandy's_ hull half-buried in snow, with a smaller image of Commander Shepard herself static and smirking in the top right corner. Her entire life trotted out, from a shadowy past on the streets of Earth to the bloodbath on Akuze, a series of items in a list that led nowhere, that led to Alchera, and a death alone and afraid. Garrus had actually pitied her when he'd heard the newcast, if only for an instant; the memory of her retreating back had seemed so trivial, so _pointless_ , that he'd told himself he would have ended up going vigilante on Omega regardless of whether Shepard had seen fit to let him join her team.

Then she came back. And there was no pity left in the galaxy for Commander Shepard now.

"Well," he said, and typed in the final pass-code. "Hopefully not this time."

The screen changed. The Blue Suns logo flashed once, twice, and was replaced by lines and lines of data scrolling up the screen. Even the bitterness of the memories he’d just wandered out of couldn't sour this moment for him. He opened up his omnitool and began the process of downloading the culmination of six months of death running on his heels, so he might turn around and give chase.

"Not so fast, Vakarian." A firm hand on his shoulder pauldron tugged him away from the keyboard, and Shepard stepped up to take his place. "Ladies first.”

He stared at her even as she turned to the screen, the blue wash over her face clashing with the glowing red. "We had a deal."

"And I'm keeping it. But first I make sure I get what's mine."

When she turned back and saw the coldness in Garrus's eyes, she laughed. "Now's a bad time to start distrusting me, Garrus. I could have shot you ten times over while we fought our way here."

"Only ten? I had you in my scopes at least twice that." But he forced himself to relax, raising his gun to check the heat sink. The room was silent but for the faint and far-off hiss of gas, distant shouts and gunshots muffled and distorted by the corridors. The doors around the room stood open, as if they were in the center of a labyrinth. While Shepard hunched over the console muttering under her breath, Garrus's eyes darted from opening to opening with a restlessness he didn't bother trying to suppress.

"How long did your VI say it would be until—" Movement cut his words short, and in the next second the merc staggered out from the door at Shepard's back, blood washing over half his face, one arm limp at his side and the other holding his gun high, pointing straight at—

The kickback vibrated through Garrus's shoulder before he was even aware of raising his rifle. Shepard spun around just as the merc slumped to the ground. His pistol hit the floor with a clatter, the dull thud of his body following suit. For a moment, Shepard and Garrus just stared at it; and then, their gaze turned to each other. She looked into his eyes, mild shock still written into her face, cracking open her expression into something almost vulnerable.

She _knew_. She knew exactly what had just happened before Garrus even did. But he realized it, too, when he saw it in her face.

She forced a laugh. "Damn, Vakarian—" But then the soft trill from the computer terminal, and Shepard's omni-tool pinged in reply.

"Your upload is complete, Commander," EDI said mildly, as if Commander Shepard did not now owe Garrus her life.

"Understood." Shepard raised her gun, nodded stiffly at Garrus. Whatever had happened between them was over now. "Move out. Let's get off this wreck before the rest of the Blue Sun's cavalry blows us out of the sky."


	8. Chapter 8

They made it back to the _Normandy_ as Jack's team swung around to meet them, splattered with merc blood and grinning widely. "Looks like you had fun," Shepard commented as she sidled up beside the biotic juggernaut.

Garrus wouldn't have dared to get that close, personally. But Jack just turned to Shepard with a blood-thinning grin. "Shoulda been there, Shepard. We took those bastards apart at the joints."

"Not completely. Ran into a survivor while we finished up in the command center." Shepard's voice remained neutral. Most of the other crewmembers weren't even listening, jostling each other as the airlock depressurized and regaling each other with the play-by-play of exactly how they'd taken the mercs apart. But from his place leaning one shoulder nonchalantly on the wall Garrus was listening very carefully.

Jack just laughed. "Bet he wasn't a survivor for long."

"He almost blew my head off, Jack."

"Then you should have been paying better attention." Jack turned to glance at Garrus. "Good thing you had boy-scout here to save your ass, huh?"

"Shut up, Jack. You and your crew got sloppy, and that's not going to happen again." Not once did Shepard's voice rise. And yet, in that moment Garrus had no doubts as to who was in command.

Jack's gaze slid away from him with a cutting roll of her eyes, but when she turned back to Shepard there was no remaining trace of sarcasm in her voice. "Won't happen again, Commander."

"You're right about that." Shepard clapped her on the shoulder as the airlock doors slid open, and the crew rushed around them back into the _Normandy's_ well-lit and distinctly unravaged halls. "I'll meet you in the comms room at 0900. We'll discuss our next move then."

Jack nodded, casting one more distinctly dirty look at Garrus before following her crew out of the airlock. "Let's make it quick, yeah? I want to get back on my ship as soon as humanly possible."

"Can't stand being second in command, huh?"

"Whatever you gotta tell yourself, Shepard,” Jack said over her shoulder just before she turned the corner.

And then he and Shepard were alone. He expected her to fall back into that easy, natural bravado that came so quickly to her; instead she stood in the open doorway of the airlock and regarded him with an expression that was hard to read. Of course, all of her expressions were hard to read—it was just that more often than not she was at least  _pretending_  to be obvious on the surface.

The nice thing about being around culturally-deaf humans was he didn't even have to feign good-naturedness. He turned so both his shoulders were resting on the wall behind him and quirked a mandible. "Forget which way the brig is, Shepard?"

A tiny almost-smile tugged at her lips. "Didn't expect you to be so eager to return to captivity."

"What can I say. Two square meals a day, plenty of legroom, the constant knowledge that death is one wrong move or word away—it sure beats the vigilante life."

"Maybe I should start charging you rent." She paused. There was something she—no. She shook her head as if to clear it, and then stepped back to give him room to pass. "After you, Archangel. Your vacation room awaits."

Feeling as if he were missing something that even an ex-detective should have picked up in an instant, he stepped out of the airlock and let her march him to the armory, where Jacob's stare was slightly less caustic than it had been before. Willingly surrendering his rifle was one of the hardest things Garrus had ever needed to do; his chest twinged painfully as Jacob slid it back into the locker. Shepard waited in the back of the room, her own guns returned. She kept her armor on, even though Jacob and the majority of her crew had already kitted down.

As she walked him across the bridge to the elevator Garrus let her grab his arm and give him the occasional jostle whenever one of her crew happened to glance their way. A few stopped and saluted as she passed by; others didn't. It wasn't, after all, strictly a military ship, no matter how the Commander styled herself. But he suspected Shepard took note of those that didn't just as Garrus did. As enemies or potential allies, whatever way the dice might fall.

Shepard was silent in the elevator. Garrus felt his fringe already begin to prickle at the prospect of being shut into that dully humming red box again. But they’d only been in motion for a few seconds when she reached out to slam her hand on the control panel, and bring the elevator to a halt. The doors stayed resolutely shut.

"Uh oh," Garrus said dryly. "When someone freezes the elevator, you know it's going to be bad."

She ignored his comment. Her eyes were on the floor, knuckles pressed to her mouth as if going over some very unappealing options in her head, trying to find a way out.

"So,” she said at last,  crossing her arms over her chest and looking up at him with something like defiance. "Why did you do it?"

Garrus leaned back against the wall, feigning nonchalance. "I've done a lot of things, in the past few hours alone. You'll have to be more specific."

"Don't be coy, Vakarian. You could have just as easily let that merc shoot me in the back of the skull."

Garrus shrugged. "I don't think Jack—or anyone on your crew, for that matter—would really care whether it was me who shot you or not. With you dead, best case scenario is I’m dead. Worst case scenario, so is my crew."

"Got it all figured out, huh?"

"If it makes you feel better, I  _was_  sorely tempted not to take the shot."

Shepard didn't even crack a smile. "Come on, Garrus. For an ex-detective, you’re a terrible liar. Give me the truth."

The truth was—Spirits, Garrus didn't even know. He'd acted on impulse alone, the muscle-grabbing jolt accessing his body far before he could have weighed his options. There had been no thought involved. It was only afterward, as he stood meeting Shepard's eyes with the weight of what had just happened between them that he realized it: Shepard was the only person alive who knew Archangel's identity. The only person who could threaten his family. If he had let himself be a split second too slow, surely even EDI couldn't fault him. His family would have been safe, even if his life—and his crew’s lives—were forfeit.

And the worst part was, he didn't even regret it. Which made him all the more furious at his own sentimental stupidity.

With a shrug, he turned to face the closed doors of the stalled elevator. "Does it really matter, Shepard? We were in combat, I did my job. Now I'm tired, and would like to lie down on the closest thing to a comfortable bed in my cell."

He thought Shepard was going to push the issue. Clearly owing him anything wasn’t something she felt she could just brush off. But then she punched the elevator's controls with an aggravated sigh, and it jolted back into motion without further stops.

They made the final trek back to the battery in silence. It was only as the door slid open to reveal the red-tinged darkness within that Shepard stopped.

"Look. There are better places than this to spend the next thirty-six of our transit time. Let me find you somewhere with a real bed, shower privileges—"

Somehow, the backwards attempt at kindness is the final straw. Garrus laughed in her face. "So it’s bribery?"

To her credit—what little there was—Shepard looked uncomfortable. "You helped me out back on the  _Acheron_. Let me repay the favor."

"Is that what you're so afraid of?  _Owing_ me?" He leaned in closer, holding her gaze. “You know, I spent a long time trying to figure you out. I admit, in the days when you were hunting Saren, I was still pretty sore about you refusing to let me tag along. I watched you from the news broadcasts as you took down Sovereign, no help from the Council or the Alliance; just you and your crew and the certainty that you were right.”

That lopsided grin crept over Shepard’s face again. “Sounds like you had a bit of a crush, Vakarian.”

“And then you died, and came back,” Garrus continued. “Joined Cerberus, left Cerberus. Targeted mostly mercs and criminals, clean, precise strikes, meetings with all kinds of shady factions, connections to the Shadow Broker. I thought, at first, that you might be like us. There was a pattern to it, a plan I couldn’t make out with you at the center. Maybe you had gone crazy after Sovereign, but you were still trying to do _something_.” He shook his head. “I was wrong. All you care about is killing. It’s all that makes you feel anything, isn’t it?”  

Shepard bared her teeth. It didn’t resemble anything close to a smile. “Spare me the sanctimonious lecture, Vakarian. I don’t give a damn what you think of me. At the end of the day, what matters is that I _won_.”

But that wasn’t true. He could see it now: the flicker behind her eyes as each of his words hit home. And the fact that Shepard actually felt something like remorse, and yet kept doing the things she did—that was even worse. And as soon as he saw that weak point, he had to take the shot. 

Garrus forced a laugh, devoid utterly of amusement. “Spirits, it just eats you alive, doesn’t it? Knowing that at the end of the day, I’m just _better_ than you. I didn’t save your life so I could use it against you, but it’s just who I am.”

Shepard's expression darkened as he spoke. She kept her hands clasped loosely behind her back, eyes remote, cold. After a moment, she raised one arm and activated her omnitool, punching in a few short keystrokes with a blank expression.

Garrus's own omnitool pinged. It had failed to register that she'd let him keep it this time. The Blue Sun logo floated before his eyes, followed by all the data they'd just grabbed from the  _Acheron_.

"Some light reading to keep you busy," she said coolly. "We reach Omega in thirty six hours."

With a gesture, the doors slid closed. The last thing Garrus saw was Shepard's face, her impassive expression not faltering for an instant. He stared at the metal where her face had been just seconds ago a moment longer before raising his omnitool once again. Six months of work, right before his eyes, and nothing to do for a day and a half but dive into it. Maybe he should have felt grateful. Mostly, he felt angry; though he wasn't even sure why.

Closing out of his omnitool, he trooped over to the corner of the room he'd designated as his sleeping section. The data would be there when he woke up. In the meantime, he needed rest. He could only hope that when he woke, his thoughts would somehow be clearer.


	9. Chapter 9

Shepard stomped down the hallway from the Main Battery dragging her own personal thundercloud behind her. The metaphorical steam coming from her ears could have fogged up the _Normandy’s_ windows. And the worst part, the absolute  _worst_  of it, was that it was all her own damn fault.

How could she be so careless as to let that turian save her life? He never should have had the _opportunity_ , let alone the motivation. Truthfully, she'd rather have taken a bullet than owe Vakarian that kind of debt. But she'd gotten cocky, focusing on watching him in the reflection of the panel rather than checking her six. And he'd been there, watching it for her.

She hated him for it. Just a little. It made everything so damn  _complicated_.

It wasn't like Shepard was the kind of person to go all gung-ho about honor and life-debts. She believed in not being a total asshole, whenever the situation allowed it (which lately, had been rare enough). That was about as far as Shepard's code of honor went.

But.

It was that little  _but_  which really got under her skin. Because the fact was, she  _knew_ she owed him; and she knew he knew she knew. What a bullshit turn of events this had turned out to be.

She was just about ready to stomp her way back to the comm room and give Jack a second dressing down for her sloppiness, when a quiet laugh stopped her short.

It came from the mess table, right as she passed it by. It was the kind of laugh you couldn't not hear, because it was a laugh you were  _meant_  to hear. It was, in fact, more of a snicker. A sound which bumped your elbow as you passed by, and then apologized far too profusely.

Shepard stopped, and slowly turned around.

Kelas Tyr sat at the table surrounded by fellow mercs, like some tasteless parody of the Last Supper. As Shepard turned to meet her gaze, Tyr's smarmy little smile widened. At once, everyone around her went conspicuously silent.

"Commander," she said, tipping her dirty fork at her brow in a lazy salute. The title stuck to Shepard's skin like wet paper, clinging and flimsy.

"Something funny, Tyr?"

"No sir," Tyr said, immediately sobering up. But Shepard could see the flicker behind her eyes, the echo of that quiet, pointed laugh. It wasn't amusement; Tyr wasn't laughing at _her_. She was laughing at Shepard’s authority, at the idea that this strutting ex-soldier with delusions of grandeur could dare to tell the hardened mercs in her crew what to do. There was only one way to deal with people like that.

"That's lucky," Shepard snapped, taking a step towards the table to lay the palms of her hands on its surface, and lean further towards Tyr's face. "I'm not in a laughing mood today."

"Problem with the prisoner, sir?" Tyr said, all innocence. "Is he feeling a bit cramped in his cell? Maybe he'd rather get some time to stretch his legs. Or maybe he's hungry—it's quite the hardship, isn’t it, to be stuck on this old tin can in a warm dry place with square meals and not one single duty to worry about."

"A damn ordeal," one of Tyr's lackeys—Shepard was pretty sure his name was Lisus—agreed. He had short red hair and a burn scar stretching over half his chin, and Shepard immediately committed his face to memory. She'd have Jacob start a list of all the dissidents, later, when she had dealt with everything—

"I could almost swear you ugly bastards are complaining about your bed and board," Shepard said. "Did you sign on to this crew for some good old fashioned pilfering and plundering, or did you join up because you thought it would be a damn luxury tour?"

"Oh, it's the pilfering and plundering, certainly, sir." Tyr's metal eyes were wide as a cherub's. "Only we haven't been having much of that lately either, have we?"

"And not much pay," Lisus muttered.

"No, we haven't that either," Tyr said with a long suffering shake of her head. "Not at all like some of us had expected, what with you reputation and all, Commander—well-founded, we'll all agree! I'm sure you really are just as bad as the stories say."

The red glint in the depths of Tyr’s eyes returned as she finished speaking, the smile set on her face like the grin of rigor mortis. Shepard would have liked to make that metaphor a reality. Instead she leaned in closer, ignoring all the other face at the table but Tyr's. "You best hope you never find that out, Tyr."

"No sir," Tyr said. "I imagine I already know."

Shepard pushed off the table and stalked away, a knot of tension gnawing its way between her shoulder blades where she could feel Tyr and the rest of her gang staring after her. "Not to worry, captain!" Tyr called at her back. "Your loyal crew will make sure our dear prisoners enjoy a pleasant and comfortable stay! Would hate to see their suffering weighing on your conscience!"

Shepard, who could be a damn fool sometimes when she put her mind to it, almost stopped and turned around. But to be seen trying to defend Garrus and his crew from even the insinuation of violence would be the kiss of death for her authority. Besides, Tyr wouldn't move against her direct orders—not  _yet_. When Jacob had said he thought there was a mutiny brewing on the horizon, Shepard hadn’t quite taken him seriously.

She was now.

She stepped into the elevator, and even when the doors slid closed she would not allow the worry to show even a trace on her expression.

 

*

 

Jack had her knife collection out on the conference table, halfway through the process of sharpening them. The sight was enough to put a smile back on Shepard's face, though only for a moment.

"Jack, sometimes I think you're a parody of yourself," she said easily, falling into a chair and propping her boots on the table as Jack looked up with a grin. "We have guns, you know. Many, many guns."

"Yeah, but don't try to tell me it feels half as good to hold a big dull hunk of metal than something sharp enough to cut you just by looking at it."

With the toe of her boot, Shepard nudged one of Jack's knives where it lay on the table. It spun in a slow circle, perfectly balanced. "I don't know, Jack—when I hold my Carnifax I feel pretty goddamn good."

"Really? Because you look like that turian turned you down for prom."

Shepard's expression froze in a perfectly blank mask, but Jack knew her better than to buy it. From the moment she glanced up to confirm it on Shepard's face a smirk spread over her own. "Uh huh, that's what I thought. What the hell happened on the _Acheron_?"

"What happened is that you and your team got goddamn sloppy, and we had to clean up your mess."

"Oh, come on, Shepard. You finished off the human Reaper practically single-handed, a couple mercs are nothing you can't handle."

"I wouldn't have to handle it if you did your damn job."

"Jesus, you really are in a mood today." Jack set her knife she’d been working on down on the table and fixed Shepard with a look. "What’s going on?"

For a moment, Shepard gave in to the urge to drag a hand over her face. Her skin felt tight, and dry, like a mask pressed over her face that made it hard to breathe. "Nothing. Just a lot of bullshit lately."

"You should figure out some way to relax."

"If shooting mercs with big guns doesn't get the job done for me then I’m not sure what will."

"I recommend some hot, meaningless sex. Maybe with that stuck-up turian asshole you have stashed in the main battery."

This time, Shepard didn't even try to keep her face straight. Her boots hit the floor as she swung her legs off the table so she could lean forward and fix Jack with the full force of her disbelief. " _Excuse me_?"

"Don’t look at me like that, I could hear your comm chatter. Sure he's an alien, but it's better than picking someone on your crew. That gets messy." Jack shrugged, and reached for the next knife. “Well, if you’re gonna fuck his operation, you might as well fuck him too. You’re a total bitch when you’re not getting any.”

Shepard snorted without much humor. “I’d like to think I have better options than captured prisoners.”

“Hell, you know I didn’t mean it like that. I’m just saying, he has something you want, you have something he wants…”

Shepard cocked an eyebrow. “What makes you think he wants anything from me?”

“You’re you, Shepard. Everyone does.”

Shepard bent forward with a sigh, running her fingers through her hair. "I'm not going to fuck Archangel, Jack. That's just a whole can of worms I wouldn't want to open, even if I wanted  _him_."

Jack rolled her eyes. "Whatever you say, Shepard. Are you keeping me from getting back to my ship just to talk about your love life, or are we going to figure out how we're not totally boned in the less-fun way?"

Shepard let her head hang between her shoulders, staring at the floor between her boots. "That is the question, isn't it." With a stiff breath she straightened up, leaving any lingering vestiges of self-pity behind. Jack watched her a little closely, maybe, but that was only fair. Had to keep an eye on your SO to make sure they weren't about to crack. Even if Shepard wasn't exactly Jack's CO, and she'd cracked a long time ago.

"We'll be back at Omega tomorrow," she said, shifting effortlessly into her brisk, businesslike military voice. "There we'll sell the scrap, dump the prisoners, get repaired and resupplied. Then, we have our next target." She held out her omnitool, and the data she and Vakarian had downloaded sprung into view. "The Blue Sun communications relay. It's how they talk to all their factions across the galaxy, organize strikes, recruitment—"

"And you want to blow it up?"

"No." Shepard grinned. "I want to tap it."

"Huh." Jack stared at the display thoughtfully. "A permanent, real-time insight into their operation. Tempting. But I prefer jobs that let me blow stuff up with my mind."

"There will be plenty of that. And our pick of lucrative jobs, to placate the crew."

Jack snorted. "Surprised you remembered to think about that."

"It seems I don't have a choice." Shepard lowered her omnitool. "How’s your crew holding up?"

"My ship's smaller than yours, with about half as many bells and whistles. I keep a close eye on everyone aboard, and they're either loyal or they're spaced."

"Good. The last thing we need right now is two ships plotting mutiny."

"They'd have to be crazy to think they could take you, Shepard."

"Unfortunately, Jack, I think that's exactly what they are."

"Not as crazy as you, though."

"I sure hope not. But we may find that out." Shepard pinched the bridge of her nose. “We just have to hold together a little longer. We're closer than I ever hoped we'd be, and I’m not going to let Tyr blow this open for me."

"I'll blow her open first, if you like."

"God, I really would—but the way things are right now, I think that would cause more problems than it would solve." Shepard leaned over to pick up one of Jack's knives, inspecting the point but knowing better than to test it against her finger. "Alright, get off my ship. Keep scanning the local frequencies for signs of pursuit, but I wouldn't expect anything."

"Too bad." Jack stood, sliding each knife into various concealed places in her pants. Her tattoos shifted like the images were alive. "You better find some way to unwind before we hit Omega, or I'm going to buy you a hooker."

" _Goodnight_ , Jack."

"It could be. Just say the word." The door slid closed behind her, leaving Shepard alone. The empty chairs of the conference room were all tilted towards her, as if waiting to hear her speak. Not like she had any shit worth saying. Her head was a ball of lint on a match, fuzzy and itchy and beginning to smoke.

"Commander." EDI's polished tones sounded in her personal earpiece rather than the hallway speakers. “It has been over 45 hours since you experienced a REM cycle. When severe enough , sleep deprivation can have a similar effect on the human mind as alcohol poisoning."

“If this was anything like alcohol poisoning I’d be feeling a lot better by now.” Shepard leaned back in her chair and pressed the heels of her hands into her eye sockets. It felt like she was driving two spikes deeper into her brain.

 _At the end of the day, I’m just_ better _than you._

Maybe it was true. But Shepard was done with trying to be good.

“I’m gonna do the rounds,” Shepard announced for EDI’s benefit. The disapproving silence was answer enough. When she pushed herself upright for a moment it felt as if ever fiber in her muscles was about to snap like an overused rubber band; but then she was on her feet, and the pain behind her eyes flared to its apex and then slowly, steadily receded into the dull throb she knew how to tolerate. She would check on her crew. Check on her ship. Bark some orders, clap some shoulders, toss around a few cutting grins. Be the captain. Be the _Commander_.

She’d sleep when she was dead.


	10. Chapter 10

It wasn't Shepard who came for him, once they reached Omega.

Garrus had felt the ship dock hours ago, the familiar grind of interlocking metal parts holding the ship in place. He'd stood up, stretched his stiff muscles, and faced the door. A line of cutting remarks already on this tongue for the moment Shepard opened it.

A good long while later, he stopped resisting the urge to pace. He'd been going over the intel in the hours he had to wait, and it was as enlightening as it was disheartening. Before, they'd hit their targets without knowing exactly what they were up against. Now they knew, and the odds were suicide.

With all the data laid out before him in crisp numerical detail, Garrus realized the truth: He’d never have been able to make a dent in their organization even when he'd had his ship and resources. Part of him had always known that, but it was easier when hopelessness wasn’t staring him in the face in hard, immutable facts.

To even make a sizeable dent in the Blue Suns, Garrus would need a merc gang of his own. And what he had was a dozen do-gooders and whatever pickings Shepard let them keep when she dumped them right back where they started. He didn't even have a _ship_.

Despite the fact that he could have easily spent a week going through the Blue Sun data, his thoughts kept returning to Shepard. Any minute he expected the door to open and her to step inside, that smirking mask back in place but for the hardness he'd come to look for around her eyes. She'd tell him they’d arrived, and he'd say it took her rusty bucket of a ship long enough, and she'd remind him how her rusty bucket turned his ship into scrap parts—and then the moment where he'd be able to forget he was bantering with a dangerous, murderous pirate would end.

Without really meaning to, he kept thinking about the _Acheron_. The shot he probably shouldn’t have taken. Which led back to the moment in the Battery when he probably should have killed her. It was the latter, especially, he couldn’t seem to get out of his head; for reasons which, given his present circumstances, couldn’t help but disturb him.

At the time, his thoughts had been only on the throbbing artery nestled in Shepard’s throat. But when he thought back on that moment now, he couldn’t help but remember the way her body had felt pressed against his. Soft. Yet strong enough to break him, if she got the chance.

Alone in the battery now, Garrus shook his head to clear it. It was just stress. And Shepard _was_ attractive. Not physically, because of the whole cross-species thing; though her glowing scars were fascinating, as was the flexibility of her expressions. He could have watched her face change all day. And well, he’d been around humans plenty and never felt a particular urge to watch their weirdly squishy faces move, so fine, maybe he _was_ attracted to the Commander. Maybe he had been from the start, way back on the Citadel, wrapped up in the glamor of her reputation.

That didn’t change the fact that, on a personal level, she was pretty much repugnant. Unfortunately, his body was not taking cues from his brain.

When the door opened two hours after he'd thought it would, three armed grunts with cold expressions stood in the door instead.

Garrus had risen to his feet when he heard the mechanism begin to unlock; he stared at them blankly. "Time to go, Archangel," the one in the middle said—the same who had appeared in the armory and demanded a place on the squad. Shepard had called her Tyr. The grin that spread over her face was nothing like the one Shepard habitually wore. It wasn't an affectation. It was a seam splitting open, revealing the rot beneath. Her teeth were the least of it—half of them were metal.

"What, no complimentary hot towel?" He kept his voice light, but beneath it ran a current of unease. Maybe Shepard really had decided to just kill him and be done with it. He wanted to believe his words would have had the opposite effect. But he'd wanted to believe a lot of things about Shepard, and she'd proved him wrong every time.

"You know,” Tyr said, her grin growing wider even as her eyes stayed as blank as two portholes looking out on deep space, "I heard you had a quick mouth. Thought maybe that was why the captain bothered keeping you alive and happy, but now that I see those fangs I'm not so sure."

Garrus blinked. Was she implying—? Well, of course she was. Shepard had probably told the entire crew that she had the mighty Archangel wrapped all the way around her little finger. Or, well. Given what he knew of Shepard, she might have selected a more graphic body part to illustrate her point. After all, she had her  _reputation_  to worry about.

All at once, he was tired of it. Tired of Shepard's stupid, political games. "Where's the Commander?" he said, staring Tyr down without flinching. She let out a loud laugh and glanced between her companions.

"Missing the  _Commander's_ attentions already? Come on, she can't be  _that_  good." With a jerk of her chin, the two guards on her flank moved forward to each of Garrus's sides. The wide grin on Tyr’s face was gone now. "You're coming with us, bird."

The muzzle of a gun jabbed his back pointedly. Garrus held his ground. The unease was becoming harder to hide. Shepard mentioned her crew might turn—had it finally happened? Was she dead? The thought should have been a relief. "And what if we're going somewhere I don't like?"

Tyr tilted her head. Her eyes flashed as they caught the light—metal sensors, probably relaying all sorts of data about his vital signs. She took a step forward until she was standing right in front of him, and he didn't even see her arm move before she'd driven the butt of her gun into the weak point at his midsection.

He doubled over, gasping for the breath that rushed out of his body like the pain was a match and the air in his lungs was fuel. Even as he desperately struggled to breathe he knew he couldn't fight back. No matter how lenient Shepard had been with him, these mercs would kill him the second he gave a reason to.

"Shep said no roughin' him up, Tyr," one of the two stone-faced cronies said as Garrus slowly straightened up.

"Well I ain't planning on telling her," Tyr snapped, rounding on the guard who had spoken, getting up in his face as he tried to cringe away. "How ‘bout you, Lisus?"

"No," Lisus stuttered. "No way—"

"That's what I fuckin' thought," Tyr said with satisfaction. She turned back to Garrus, and he was careful to keep every ounce of defiance off his face.

"Step lightly," she said. "And no more questions."

This time, when he felt the pressure of a gun prodding at his back, he went without comment or resistance.

 

*

 

When they led him to the ship's airlock and he stepped out onto the dark, red-tinted docks of Omega, he could hardly believe his eyes. There was no firing squad waiting for him. No crumpled bodies of his squad mates tossed to the side. Just the usual foot traffic on the busy dock, none of whom took notice of a few extra grunts with guns.

He picked her out almost instantly. She stood on a raised platform on the docks nearby, a datapad in her hand as she argued with the dockmaster. She looked about ready to break it over his head. Repair drones were already scuttling over the _Normandy's_ hull, fixing the holes Garrus's modest cruiser had punched in it. He could see his own ship at a nearby port. No repair drones there. He felt an ache deep in the chambers of his heart as he stared at his ship. Like a carcass set out at market, just waiting for people to start carving pieces off her.

When he turned back to Shepard, he found himself meeting her gaze. Her eyes cut straight through him. He held the look, daring her to come over— _wanting_ her to. He wanted to hear her try to justify herself, one last time, and know that it was all a lie—

But then she turned away, and didn't look at him again. The ache in his chest became something more like an inferno.

A short distance away he heard a sharp cry. He picked out Sidonis first, the tallest of his crew; he stood behind a line of Shepard's crew, unarmed and unarmored. The rest of the squad was gathered around him, and they'd seen Garrus coming. When he saw Sidonis start to bristle as the guards wouldn't let him pass, Garrus met his eyes and gave his head a brief shake. Across the distance Garrus couldn't pick up his subvocals, but he did see Sidonis's mandibles clench tighter against his face. He took a step back, and the guards relaxed.

For the moment he was stuck in the no-man's land on the docks between the Normandy and his crew, with nothing but Tyr's unnerving smile for company.

"Well, Thanks for walking me home. Very chivalrous of you." Garrus hadn't taken one step away from Tyr before he heard the menacing click of her gun's safety flicking off.

"Not so fast, angel boy,” she drawled. Garrus turned around. He hadn’t really expected her to just let him go. Her eyes were gleaming as she watched him; was that a line of rust around the edge of her ocular implant? "We're not done talking, you and I."

Garrus stared at her warily. He doubted this merc would shoot him in the middle of a busy dock with his entire crew looking on, but he wasn't willing to test that theory by turning his back to walk away. "What do you want to chat about? My small talk’s a bit rusty."

"Just shut up and listen to what I have to say." She leaned in closer. Garrus resisted the urge to pull back. "I imagine that after your little stay in our ship's brig, there are few good feelings between you and the Commander."

"Yeah, we're real pals," Garrus said dryly. "All that time stuck in the battery just meant I got to meet the  _real_ Commander Shepard. You know, she's actually into knitting—"

"I said shut up!" Tyr hissed. "She wrecked your ship. Took you and your crew hostage and was too stupid or chicken-shit to kill you after. But her mistake could be  _our_  reward, you see?"

Garrus decided against asking her what a chicken was. "I'm afraid I don't."

"Are you fucking stupid?" Garrus assumed it was a rhetorical question, and kept his mouth shut. "I'm saying, _you and me_. Against the captain, and her pet biotic freak. You got your whole crew behind you, and well, I got people too—I could get you back on the ship while we're docked here tonight, no problem." Her eyes glinted. It wasn't just the metal. "We kill the crew that won't turn, and then kill that cowardly bitch of a captain. I imagine she's got all sorts of loot up in that cabin from all the prizes we’ve taken, that she didn’t see fit to share with us. And since I'm feeling especially generous, I'll even let you have your ship back afterwards—"

"Enough," Garrus said, holding up a hand.

Tyr stared between him and the offending appendage with a look of disgust. "Shoulda seen it," she muttered. "You're weak, just like her—"

"I said enough, Tyr. I heard what I needed to hear. I'm in."

Tyr blinked. And then, that awful smile went tearing open across her face. "Well, shit," she said. "You really are gonna be my guardian angel, huh?"

"We’ll see." Garrus glanced at his crew, where they watched from behind the line of Shepard's people with wary expressions. They would be difficult to convince. But he'd dragged them into worse. "There's just one condition."

Tyr's expression turned sullen. "We all get fair shares of the loot, ‘less you're willing to fight for it—"

"I don't care about the money." His eyes flicked back to the docking platform, where Shepard had turned her back. She stood with her hands on her hips, staring at her own ship—and Garrus stared at her. He let his mandibles flex, slow and deliberate, showing off the long fangs beneath. He held out one taloned hand. "When we take the ship, I want Shepard alive."

Only a moment of hesitation before Tyr's palm slapped into his. “Deal," she said, and her eyes were like the dull muzzles of a pair of pistols staring up at him.


	11. Chapter 11

The door to Shepard’s cabin opened without a ping from EDI, which narrowed down the list of prospective surprise visitors to people she could name on one hand. Heavy boots stomped to the top of the stairs and paused for a moment of damning silence. The snort of laughter confirmed it. “Well, shit. If you were going to party it up you could have at least _invited_ me.”

Shepard didn’t open her eyes. At the moment they were throbbing pleasantly along with the rest of her head, in a way she could already tell was going to get a lot less pleasant a lot more quickly than she’d like. “Knew you’d find your way here either way, Jack.”

The boots proceeded down the stairs. Jack always walked like someone trying to sound a lot bigger and heavier than she actually was. Not like Shepard would ever mention that insight. Jack didn’t appreciate being psychoanalyzed any more than Shepard did.

The sound of rummaging in Shepard’s nightstand was followed by a satisfied hum as Jack procured a second glass. Glass rasping over the metal table next as Jack slid the half-empty bottle over; the wet slosh of a healthy portion followed by the jostle of the couch cushions when Jack threw herself down on the other side. It was kind of fun, to lie here with her eyes closed and just picture everything happening. Comfortable. Familiar.

But then there was only silence from the place where Jack sat sipping her whiskey, a silence Shepard didn’t know how to interpret but which demanded her attention. It was a distinctly _pensive_ kind of silence. Jack didn’t do pensive. She did sullen like an art form, threatening like a—a—god, Shepard was going to need another drink if she was going to come up with any more metaphors. She should sit up and pour one and look Jack in the eyes. Lying drunk on the couch and refusing to open her eyes wasn’t exactly standard behavior anyway. In fact, now that Shepard thought about it, it was maybe a bit weird. Maybe a bit of a warning sign.

She opened her eyes.

Jack wasn’t watching her, to her relief. The silence was directed at the fish tank instead, empty as a cross section of cloudless blue Ohio sky. It had that same kind of flat bleakness to it, at least. That same baleful shine. Except back on Earth she’d tilted her head back and thought the sky looked so thin you could puncture it with a pin and tear straight through, straight _out_ , away from all of the shit that stupid blue shrink-wrap held in against the dirt. The image had come back to her, years later, when she left Earth for the first time. The atmosphere had burned around the Alliance recruit transport much longer than Shepard had expected, like the sky went on forever and it was all blue flame, with nothing but a thin pane of glass between her and the heat—

She sat up, nearly tipping over with the sudden movement, but she managed to slam her hand on the table to catch herself and even sort of make it look like a gesture of enthusiasm as she poured another drink, all the way to the top. The second she was upright her leg resumed its routine, bouncing up and down to the tune of anxiety playing in the background of Shepard’s head that she could always drown out until she was alone. Mostly alone. Jack didn’t count.

“Repairs are going well,” Jack said. Her eyes were on Shepard’s leg. “Should be ready to get back to the mayhem in less than forty-eight hours. So if you plan on being drunk that whole time, you might want to slow down—”

“Je- _sus_ , am I hearing this right? You telling me to stop drinking?”

“I said _slow down,_ dick. Not like I fucking care, as long as you save some for me.” Jack leaned forward to swipe the bottle and take a long drink sans glass. “No takers on the starting bid for Archangel’s ship, yet. If you want to sell it before we ship out you’d be better off opening it up for scrappers to pick what they need.”

“Not yet.” Jack snorted. “I’m waiting on one last lead,” Shepard snapped, balancing her glass on her knee to curb its restless jiggling. “I give it another day. One more day, and if it doesn’t come through, we let the butchers chop her up and sell her for parts.”

“I still don’t get why you want Archangel on this crew so bad.”

Shepard refused to look chagrined even as Jack saw straight through her evasiveness. “I’m good at knowing when something will be useful to me,” Shepard said with a shrug. “Always was. The right gun, the right ship—the right person. I can see the threads, where they lead, where they intersect—” Jack’s blank look drew her up short. “It’s not something I can easily describe,” she said, lifting her glass off her leg again and not even caring when it went back to its restless up and down. “I just know that I can use him.”

“Doesn’t seem like the type who’d want to be used.”

“No one is. That’s why you don’t let them know you’re using them.”

Jack laughed, shaking her head as she took another drink. “You are one stone cold bitch, Shepard. That’s why I always liked you.”

“Shut up, Jack. You hated me until Pragia.”  

“Yeah, but I hate everyone.”

They fell into a companionable silence. Shepard finished her alcohol, feeling it burn through her like things she had gotten real good at not thinking about. Sometimes it struck her that her life had gone badly off course, at some point—at the point, in fact, when it ended. She was Shepard, she _was_ , she had the same face (mostly), the same ship (almost), the same memories (when she let herself remember at all). The same name. That was the important part. She was still Commander Shepard, intergalactic badass space marine with a wicked smile and a wickeder aim, Shepard who had saved the Citadel, Shepard who had died and come back—as if that was something to be proud and not terrified about. She had come back. Just not quite the same. Didn’t mean she wasn’t _her_ , right?

She put her glass on the table for Jack to refill, but Jack wasn’t paying attention. 

“That thing is fucking ridiculous,” Jack said. She was looking at the fish tank again.  

“The Illusive Man’s a pretentious dick,” Shepard agreed. “On the plus side, it does make me feel like a bit of a supervillain.”

“You should get some eels. Or maybe some sharks.”

“Too small for sharks.”

“What are you, the ASPCA?” Jack knocked back her drink and poured a second. “I say we cut a hole in the glass and turn it into a pool.”

“I can think of a number of problems with having an open container of water on a moving spaceship, but I like your enthusiasm.”

“Fuck you.”

Shepard held her glass up in an ironic toast, which earned her one of Jack’s brief, half-lipped smiles. Thank God it hadn’t been Jacob paying her a visit tonight. He’d have done the whole _concern_ thing. Jack didn’t give a damn whether Shepard drank herself under the table without even any fish for company, as long as she was still good at shooting things up the next morning. Which she always was.

“Your old ship have a tank like that?” Jack asked.

“The SR1? Hell no. No skylight either.” Unbidden, Shepard’s eyes slipped towards the scrap of tarp covering the skylight beyond. “I think that was the Illusive Man’s little joke, putting a slice of space right over the bed. A sort of ‘remember where you came from’ kind of thing.”

“More like a ‘remember I can send you back’ kind of thing. Bastard.” Jack glanced up at the tarp herself. “I don’t blame you for covering it up. That shit would give me nightmares too.”

Wordlessly Shepard clinked her glass against the bottle in Jack’s hand. The nightmares hadn’t been the worst of it. It was waking up from them, opening her eyes and staring out into that void, and being _right back there_. Sometimes her dreams had melded with reality, so even awake she’d looked up and seen the corona of fire blooming around the glass as the Normandy fell into the atmosphere once again. 

“Hey.” Jack’s boot nudged Shepard’s leg, not gently. “Where’s your head at?”

Shepard forced a grin. “In the pillage and plunder, of course. We’ve got a lot of it ahead of us.”

“Not like I don’t appreciate you trying to pander to me, Shepard, but I know your plans go a lot further than that.”

Shepard shrugged. “But with a lot of pillage and plunder along the way. If I could stop the Reapers by asking nicely I wouldn’t be doing this in the first place.”

“Bet I still could’ve convinced you.”

“Yeah fuckin’ _right_ , Jack. Your main method of persuasion is threatening physical violence.”

“Gets the job done, doesn’t it?”

“Not on me.”

“Commander.” EDI’s voice cut short whatever retort Jack had lined up. Shepard quirked her eyebrows in a _what can you do?_ kind of way as Jack just rolled her eyes.

“What’s up, EDI?”

“A member of Archangel’s crew is requesting permission to board the ship, who has identified his name as Lantar Sidonis. He claims Archangel wishes to speak with you in regards to the offer you made him, and is willing to broker a meeting.”

The grin Shepard shot Jack was as sharp as shattered glass. _Told you_ , she mouthed, and Jack waved her off with a snort. “EDI,” Shepard said, rising to her feet and stretching her back with a crack of complaining vertebrae that made her toes curl. “You tell this Sidonis person that if Archangel wants a meeting, he can march his ass back over to my ship and ask for me in person.”

“Understood.” Though EDI remained as inflectionless as always, Shepard almost thought she heard a note of satisfaction in her synthesized voice.

“I always know about these things,” Shepard said as Jack hoisted herself off the couch.

“Whatever. I still think the guy’s a dick.” Holding the bottle up to the light of the fish tank, Jack shot her a grin. “I’m taking this. If you’re planning on wining and dining your new turian sidekick you can tell him to bring his own booze.”

“It’s so adorable how you think that’s the only bottle of alcohol in here.”

Jack flipped her off on the way to the door, good natured and well-practiced. The second the door slid closed behind her, Shepard’s smirk fell off her face.

A quick catalog of her current state of being was less than encouraging. Her head was still fuzzy. Muscles sore. She couldn’t smell much of anything, but she’d bet she reeked of alcohol. Not exactly in prime shape for negotiating a partnership with a deadly merc-killer and his crew, who probably would rather see her keel-hauled over the Normandy’s engines.

That was fine. Shepard worked with people who wanted her dead on a daily basis. But maybe meeting with a future partner in crime while obviously and excessively intoxicated wasn’t a great idea.

She made her way to the bathroom with one hand on the fish tank for balance. Bowing over the sink, she stripped off her shirt and splashed cold water over her face, neck, chest. Then she put her mouth to the flow of water from the tap and drank until she felt the weight of it in her stomach like ballast. When she raised her eyes to her reflection again, her gaze didn’t waver at the edges quite so much. The scars burned like coals in the bathroom’s low light.

All hail the great Commander Shepard. A no-good pirate who would gleefully turn a good man into an asset just to reach her own ends.

The self-deprecation put a bit of a smile on her face. Damn right. That was _exactly_ what she was going to do. Garrus Vakarian’s precious vigilante honor wasn’t hers to protect. She would use him like she used everyone, and when the galaxy didn’t end when the Reapers finally got here, he could line up with the rest to thank her.

 

*

 

For old times’ sake, Shepard invited Archangel back up to her cabin.

EDI informed her that the rest of his crew had come aboard with him, and was already beginning to mingle. Shepard wasn’t sure what kind of sign that was; she hadn’t expected to find him quite so eager to sell his squad to her. But Garrus Vakarian was the kind of man who did nothing in half measures. Smart. But single minded.

When EDI let him into her cabin Shepard was waiting for him. She leaned one shoulder against the fish tank, watching as he stopped at the top of the stairs to regard her. Not coldly; just wary. Maybe even thoughtful. Shepard let the slightest hint of a smile tug at her lips on the scarred side of her face, well aware of how the red lines stood out in the blue-tinted darkness.  

“Archangel,” she said, her tone neutral.

“Commander.” Only a hint of irony in the title as he descended the stairs. The blue light was doing him a few favors too. Or maybe his eyes had always been that blue. Piercing. Not just the color, but the way they saw too much.

“Didn’t expect to see you back here so soon,” she said, crossing her arms over her chest. “Forget your toothbrush in the main battery?”

“Let’s skip the part where you make me explain what I’m doing here, Shepard.”

Shepard let a slow grin roll across her features. “Of course. I knew you could only resist my devil-may-care charms and rugged good looks for so long.”

Garrus’s mandibles twitched. She really should look up what turian social cues she was missing. Annoyed? Flustered? “Sorry to disappoint, but that’s not _quite_ what I had in mind.”

“Oh? Well then why don’t you tell me what you did have in mind, and I can see if it’s something I’m interested in.”

Garrus’s eyes narrowed. _That_ she did recognize. “You already know what I want.”

“Yeah. Alright. But maybe I want to hear you say it.”

Garrus shifted his feet, actually glancing over his shoulder at the door as if considering the option of just turning around and leaving. Shepard actually had to bite back a noise that probably would have sounded something like a _giggle_. “God, you’re actually pretty cute when you’re out of your depth.”

“Out of my element, Commander. Not out of my depth. Though I have to suspect you just enjoy making me squirm.”

“One way or another,” Shepard said with a wink. “Alright, Garrus, we’ll cut to the chase. I offered you a slot on this crew and you’ve come here to take me up on it. Lucky for your squad, I figured you would; I haven’t sold _all_ your gear and weapons yet. You’ll get what’s left back, and I won’t even charge you for it. Consider it a ‘welcome to the family’ gift.”

“How kind of you,” Garrus said dryly. “My ship—”

“No can do.” Shepard laughed in his face. “What, you think I’m just going to hand you back all your shit and then stick you on a ship with your _word_ you won’t make a run for it the second my back is turned?”

“Actually, I knew you wouldn’t.” Garrus raised a hand. Shepard tensed—but he was only reaching up to touch something in his aural canal. His mandibles twitched again, only this time there was something distinctly self-satisfied about it. “Thus, plan B.”

Shepard cocked an eyebrow. “And what exactly is—”

The vibrations traveled up through the metal floor along with a wave of sound, a low rumble that made Shepard’s hand fly out to steady herself against the fish tank on impulse, bracing her feet for when the floor gave way and the decompression sent her spinning out into the void—it didn’t. _This wasn’t Alchera_. But the sound of shouting, and a few aborted gunshots was less than promising.

“EDI, report,” Shepard snapped, her pistol practically teleporting to her hand. Garrus made no move to stop her. He mirrored her previous posture, arms crossed in front of him as he leaned on the fish tank. From the comms, only silence. “EDI. I said _report._ What the hell is happening down there?” Not even static. Garrus’s face remained as unreadable as ever, but this time it wasn’t endearing. In fact, it was goddamn _infuriating_. “Joker? Miranda? Jack?”

“Maybe they’re in the bathroom,” Garrus said wryly.

“What the hell is this?” Shepard jammed her pistol against the front of his carapace. He didn’t even shift.

“Just shaking things up a bit,” Garrus said. Still so goddamn suave even with a gun over his heart. “What’s the matter, Shepard? Don’t you get tired of winning _every_ time?”

With a snarl of disgust Shepard stepped back, circling around him and keeping the center of his forehead in her sights as she backed her way up the stairs. “Screwing with me is a big mistake.”

Garrus followed her at just enough of a distance to not be an immediate threat, each step timed perfectly with her own. “Oh, I never screw around, Shepard. It’s just _business_.”

She made it to the door and punched the panel to open it without taking her eyes off Garrus. He stopped at the top of the stairs, close enough that he could lunge for her if she gave him a split-second’s chance. She heard the door hiss open behind her; she could step out, lock him in her cabin, keep him contained, take the elevator to the Command deck and ascertain for her own damn self what the hell was happening down there—

“Evening, Commander. Got yourself in a spot of trouble?”

Shepard managed to resist the urge to whirl around, but just barely. She kept Garrus in her sights; his expression was unreadable. “Tyr,” Shepard said, and heard the answering chuckle from just behind her. “I can’t believe I’m actually saying this, but I’m glad to hear your voice. Were you planning on waiting outside my cabin until all the action was over, or—”

The feeling of something cold and metal brushing the shell of her ear stopped Shepard short.

“Actually,” Tyr said in a low, dangerous voice. “I was thinking we’d bring the action to you.”

Somewhere at Shepard’s back, the sound of two different thermal clips sliding into place. Tyr’s backup.

“How about you drop your pistol and kick it over to my associate there?” Tyr said in a voice that wavered right on the cusp of manic laughter. Shepard’s fingers tightened on her pistol. Tyr was standing close enough that Shepard could knock her gun aside before Tyr managed to shoot her in the head. If she was lucky, the shot might even hit Garrus. But even then it would be her against Tyr in unarmed combat, with two armed mercs ready to put a bullet in her the second they had a shot.

Shepard had faced worse odds. She just hadn’t walked away from them.

Her pistol clattered to the floor. When she kicked it over to Garrus he bent to pick it up without any hesitation at all, and then Tyr’s gun jabbed her in the middle of her spine and forced her back into her cabin. The door hissed shut again, only this time it was sealing her in.

Tyr shoved her onto the couch; for the first time Shepard could look up at the full scope of gutless traitors allied against her. There was Tyr, Garrus, and two soldiers she only vaguely recognized; both from Garrus’s crew. One of them passed his sniper rifle over to him, and Garrus accepted it with a wordless nod. God, she should have sold that rifle the second she kicked him off her ship. She should have blasted it out the goddamn airlock.

“Teaming up with the murderous cretin, huh,” she said to Garrus. “That’s low, even for a vigilante.”

The blow came hard and not entirely unexpected as Tyr backhanded her across the face. Luckily she hadn’t thought to use the hand holding her pistol, or the sudden shock of pain blooming across the side of Shepard’s face would probably have been joined by a concussion.

“I have waited _so_ long for this moment,” Tyr practically crowed. Shepard wanted to remind her that she’d only been on the Normandy for about three months, which in her opinion wasn’t really that long a lifespan for the conception, gestation, and full birth of a revenge-oriented mutiny. But out of some (likely misplaced) optimism that she could still walk out of this one alive, Shepard kept her mouth shut.

“What’s the matter?” Tyr leaned into her face, that horrible grin still plastered over her metal-warped features. “Nothing to say? Getting scared? _Good_. No one’s coming to help you now. We have your whole crew subdued, your AI disconnected, your comms jammed—by the time that bald biotic freak realizes what’s happening over here we’ll have the Normandy’s guns trained on her ship. So yeah. You should be fucking scared of me.”

At once, Tyr’s eyes shifted. As quickly as it came on, the manic gleam in them dulled. She drew back from Shepard so she could lean forward to pick up one of the two empty glasses on the table that she and Jack had shared less than an hour before. “Where d’you keep the booze in here?”

“Bottom drawer of the desk.” Shepard’s voice sounded slight garbled by the swelling already starting up in her lip. She watched as Tyr busied herself with pulling out a new bottle and helping herself, before sitting heavily on the bed with a sigh.

“Right. Where was I?” A long drink. Shepard glanced at Garrus and saw he wasn’t even looking at her. Typical. “Ah, right,” Tyr said, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. “Now, the only reason I don’t empty my thermal clip into your chest cavity right here and now is that removing your broken body in front of the crew could cause some mixed feelings among your more loyal followers. And I’d prefer not to kill _all_ of them as I assume my role as captain. So what do you say we march you out of here in front of the crew like you surrendered all quiet-like, and we take you to a nice alley to die in so some people don’t get in their heads to start getting themselves shot?”

“And if I say no?”

Tyr shrugged. “Blood’s a pain in the ass to get out of upholstery, but with the money I’ll get selling your partner’s ship and gear, I’m sure I can afford it.”  

Shepard lowered her gaze, buying time by looking like she was actually considering Tyr’s offer. If Tyr escorted her off the ship, Shepard would have several chances to take Tyr and Vakarian by surprise. The elevator, maybe? No, too enclosed and no cover. And the CIC was bound to be crawling with Tyr’s men. Outside the ship, then. But everything beyond the Normandy’s hull would be an unknown, from the direction they’d take her to where they planned on blowing her brains out.

“I’m waiting, asshole,” Tyr said, the glass clicking against her teeth.

Shepard raised her gaze. Tyr had never looked more infuriating than she did right now, sitting on Shepard’s bed and testing it for springiness, already mentally rearranging the furniture. The thought of Tyr taking her ship was enough to make her blood pressure spike.

Tyr set the glass down on the bed and slid a fresh heat sink into her pistol. The whiskey spilled over Shepard’s coverlet, a dark stain spreading fast.

Hell. She’d always thought she was meant to die on the _Normandy_. Might as well do it right this time.

“Well,” Shepard said, leaning back on her couch and propping her ankle on her knee. “On giving it some thought and proper deliberation, I’m inclined to say: _no_.”

Tyr stared at her blankly. “No?”

“Oh, wait, can I change my answer? Fuck no. And also, fuck you.” Shepard’s grin stayed plastered over her face even as Tyr’s expression curdled like milk in a Texas summer. Shepard wasn’t looking at her any more. She was looking at Garrus, back to the fish tank, face impassive, sniper rifle held casually across his chest. He was really just going to stand there, huh. Stand there and watch her get shot. She wanted to snarl at him, to tell him he should have let that merc on the _Acheron_ take her out, because at least there’d have been more honor in it for the both of them—to ask him how it felt to sink down to her level. She wanted to spit in his face; but part of her also wanted to shake his hand and congratulate him on a game well played.

God, they would have been _terrifying_ together. But she didn’t get to say any of that, because Tyr’s pistol was rising in the corner of her vision, so she kept her eyes on Garrus and tried to transmit every burning, conflicted sentiment in the remaining few seconds she had without being full of holes.

Garrus stepped forward.

“You know Shepard,” he said, his eyes still boring into hers. Only now—was that the flicker of amusement? “I was really hoping you would say that.”

And with that, he and his men raised their own guns—to aim right at Kelas Tyr.

Predictably, Tyr was slow on the uptake. She glanced between Garrus and his men with a blank expression; her gun was still trained on Shepard. “The hell is this?”

“This is the mutiny part two,” Garrus said smoothly. “The mutiny of the mutiny, if you will.”

“I fucking won’t,” Tyr snarled. Her cybernetic eyes darted between Shepard and the three different guns pointed her way; the spread out formation that had kept every avenue of Shepard’s escape covered had turned against her as neatly as a rat in a trap.  “You—you—fucking—”

“I’d put that gun down if I were you,” Garrus continued, his voice conversational. The muzzle of his sniper rifle didn’t waver. At this range it would explode Tyr’s head like a cherry bomb in a jack-o-lantern. Difficult to get out of upholstery, indeed. Shepard might be tempted to leave the bloodstains, and savor the memory every time she went to sleep.

Unfortunately Tyr wasn’t quite stupid enough to test her luck against three separate guns pointed at her head, and she wasn’t quite mad enough to kill Shepard anyway. She tossed her gun to the floor with an expression like she’d just been spoon-fed curdled milk, and one of Garrus’s men neatly stooped to pick it up. Tyr’s face was steadily turning a shade of purple that suggested some kind of rage-induced blood clot somewhere in her neck. Her mouth kept opening and closing as she stared between Shepard and Garrus, seemingly too angry to form coherent sentences.

“ _Well_ ,” Shepard said, folding her hands behind her head. “You certainly have a flair for the dramatic, Archangel. If you’re trying to win me over by exposing a mutiny and saving my ass in one fell swoop, well, credit where credit’s due. Hell, I’m halfway tempted to bump up your crew’s percentage from the get go—"

“Shut up, Shepard.” She blinked. Garrus had already turned away from her to raise a hand to the side of his head. “Sidonis, report. Are the rest of the mutineers disarmed?” After a moment, he nodded. “Confirmed. Hold your positions and await my mark.”

When he turned back to Shepard, she liked the gleam in his eyes a whole lot less than she had before.

“Now then,” Garrus said lightly, stepping forward. “Where were we? Oh, right. _I_ have your whole crew subdued. Your AI disconnected, your comms jammed, and the Normandy’s _impressive_ array of weapons trained on your partner’s ship. I have your entire ship and everyone on it wholly at my mercy.” Garrus sat down at the other end of the couch, his eyes never once leaving Shepard. She couldn’t have looked away if she wanted to.

“So now that my exact position in the negotiations has been established…” Garrus leaned forward, his elbows braced on his knees, to fix Shepard with a look as deliciously cold as the barrel of a pistol running up the inside of her thigh. “ _I want my damn ship back.”_


	12. Chapter 12

It took about five seconds before Shepard started to laugh.

In the time before that, her face passed through a range of emotions Garrus didn’t know it was possible to express in such short succession, let alone _feel_. The gloating smirk she’d been directing at Tyr when she thought the tables had turned slid off her face like icing off a cake in the sun. She blinked. Frowned. Comprehension dawned. Fury muscled its way in. And then—

“Oh my _God_ ,” she said, wiping away at the moisture in the corner of her eye as she finally straightened. “I mean really. _Damn_.”

“I know. I’m very impressive,” Garrus said good-naturedly. He had time to let Shepard get it out of her system. And honestly, he was enjoying this.

“You know what? I’m not even going to contest that,” Shepard said. She leaned back and crossed her arms over her chest, shaking her head at him with a grin. “I _am_ impressed, Archangel. And here I thought you were only half as smart as you are pretty.”

Garrus’s mandibles twitched in spite of himself. “Oh, at least two-thirds, I’d say. Maybe even three quarters.”

“Let’s not get crazy.” Shepard fell silent, regarding him with that same thoughtful amusement; as if he didn’t have a gun both literally and metaphorically to her head. Maybe she was wondering the same thing he was—whether it was weird to be bantering with a person who had done nothing but threaten him harm, and vice versa.

“So,” she said after a moment. “You want your ship, and your gear. As long as dumping my body in an alley somewhere isn’t among your list of demands, I think we might be able to play ball.”

Before Garrus could respond, a sharp, outraged noise from the other side of the room cut him off. He’d almost forgotten about Tyr; she sat on Shepard’s bed right where she’d settled to gloat. Sidonis and Butler kept their weapons trained on her face, but she wasn’t looking at the guns. She was staring right at Garrus, her eyes bulging dangerously. "You fucking asshole,” she said. “You think you can just screw me like this?”

“He can and he did, Tyr,” Shepard said in a bored voice, without even sparing the mercenary a glance. “Now stay quiet so the adults can talk.”

 “You _fucking_ —"

“I said shut up.” There was no weapon in Shepard’s hand, but her tone promised she didn’t need one. “We’re done with you now. This is between me and Archangel."

The laugh took Garrus off guard. It started in the back of Tyr's throat and shot out like a snapped metal cord. “Archangel?” she said. “ _Archangel_ , huh?”

Now Shepard’s eyes did shift over to Tyr. “You’re beginning to annoy me,” she said, her tone cold and clipped.

“Fuck you,” Tyr snarled. “I’m not going anywhere. Am I, _Garrus_?”

For a moment, everything froze. Like a glitch in his visor, the world seemed to skip a beat, and he was trapped in all the details; the sudden confusion on Sidonis’s face, the way Butler’ eyes darted to his own for just a second, wondering—the sneer frozen on Tyr’s face and Shepard’s cold, unwavering façade which revealed nothing at all.

Then, inevitably, the glitch unfroze. And the varren shit hit the fan.

“That’s right,” Tyr said, her smile clashing grotesquely with the mad fury in her eyes. “I know your _name_ , asshole. And so will everyone else in this system the second I want them to, so maybe you should get your fucking guns out of my face.”

Sidonis and Butler glanced back at Garrus, wavering. Shepard was watching him too, with an entirely different expression more in the vein of enraged disbelief: it wasn’t difficult to parse what she was thinking. _You told Tyr your name?_ The explicatives Shepard no doubt would have utilized were all implied in her expression. Garrus held her gaze for just a moment, allowing just the tiniest hint of the deep well of shock he was currently drowning in to touch his eyes: _Of course I didn’t._ From the slight change in Shepard’s expression, he had to hope she understood. Just as he understood there was no way in hell _she_ would have betrayed him to Tyr.

His men were still waiting for his order. There was no getting around it; with a gesture, they both lowered their guns and took a step away from Tyr, and her grin split open like rotting fruit.

“Didn’t think I was smart enough not to trust you at your word, huh Archangel? Well, that’s _your_ mistake. I never let someone stand behind me with a gun unless I’ve got an even bigger gun on _them_. The second I say so—or the second my heart stops beating—I’ve got a nice little information packet just waiting to be broadcasted to every corner of the galaxy.”

“Clever of you,” Garrus said, his mild tone masking the way his thoughts raced. He had to keep her talking. To figure out exactly what she knew, and how much damage she planned to do with it. “How’d you figure it out? Don’t suppose you recognize me from pulling you over for a DUI in the Wards.”

“Funny, asshole. But you have your girlfriend to thank for this.” Tyr turned her gaze on Shepard. “Did you think no one would notice you’re paranoid enough to bug your own ship? I tapped into your network the second I realized it existed. Listening to you two flap your gums in the battery was enough to make me want to pull my own ears out, but it got me what I wanted.”

Garrus had glanced at Shepard sharply on hearing she had bugged her own ship, but now was hardly the best time to go around tossing blame. There was no trace of concern in Shepard’s expression; even the anger had retreated below the surface of that familiar smirk. 

“Well Tyr, I have to give it to you,” she said. “You actually might be smarter than I thought.”

“Damn right,” Tyr snarled. “Now. _Archangel_. Unless you want a system-wide news bulletin to go out about your not-so-secret identity, how about you pass me that fancy rifle of yours and send your men out of the room so we can talk like civilized folks?”

Garrus’s hand clenched tighter around his rifle. He couldn’t hand it over again. Not when he’d come so _close_. But then Shepard’s hand settled on his arm in a grip that was just a little too tight, and when he met her gaze he saw something in her eyes that made his fingers loosen again.

“Sure thing, Tyr,” she said, though her eyes were still on him. “Garrus won’t be taking any risks, will he?”

He hated himself for thinking it, but—there was something in Shepard’s expression that Garrus actually, against all the odds, trusted.

He tossed his rifle onto the low table and with a quick jerk of his head, sent Sidonis and Butler to the door. They shot him one last look, concern mingled with something like curiosity, before stepping out of sight. Maybe some part of them felt like this was his comeuppance; in a way, he wouldn’t blame them. He hadn’t trusted his own crew with this secret, and now it was being used against them all. What would they think of him if he sacrificed their mission, their lives, for the sake of the people he hadn’t done enough to protect?

A moot point now. The door slid shut, and it was just him, Shepard, and Tyr.

She stood up from the bed and sauntered over to pick up Garrus’s rifle, hands clumsy on the unfamiliar weapon in a way that made Garrus’s mandibles flutter in quiet fury. But Shepard’s hand was still on his arm. He poured every ounce of his concentration into that sole point of contact, and kept his breathing even.

“So this has been a day, huh?” Tyr said, checking the heat sink before sliding it back in with a clack as it almost didn’t line up properly. She leveled the muzzle at the center of Garrus’s keel, that gruesome smile still spread over her face. “If there’s one thing I can’t fucking stand, it’s traitors. I ought to shoot you both right here and now, but there’s a few things I need from you first.”

Garrus refrained from commenting on the hypocrisy of that statement.  

“So here’s what’s going to happen,” Tyr continued, speaking to Garrus now. “You’re going to tell your men to surrender to mine. They can join Shepard’s people in the brig while they decide whether they want to work for me, or get a bullet. And you two will be taking a romantic stroll off the Normandy together, and if you cooperate _real_ good then it’ll just be your bodies going room-temperature today, and your stupid family stays out of it.” Tyr raised her eyebrows at Garrus expectantly. “Did I stutter?”

Garrus had known, on some level, that it might come to this one day. That if his identity were ever discovered, it _would_ become a choice of his crew or his family. His crew, who had sworn to die for their cause—or his family, who had nothing to do with it. Maybe, if he refused, his family would have a chance that his crew, at the mercy of Tyr’s men, would not—maybe—

Shepard’s hand tightened almost imperceptibly on his arm.

“Go on, Garrus,” she said softly, and Garrus closed his eyes. If someone had told him two days ago that he’d be pinning the lives of his family and his crew on trusting Commander Shepard, well. He wouldn’t have laughed, because the prospect was so horrifying. But now, in the moment, all he could do was take the leap.

He pressed a finger to the comm device in his aural channel. “Weaver. This is Archangel. I need you to—“ he almost stumbled over the words, but there was no stopping now— “to surrender your guns to Tyr’s men and do whatever else they say. Code Q6-F.”

From the other end of the comms, there was nothing but static. Garrus almost spoke again, asked for the confirmation he knew Weaver would have given him, had she received the order; he stayed silent. Shepard’s hand was as tight as a vice around his arm.

Still smirking, Tyr raised a hand to her own comm implant. “This is Tyr. Can you confirm Archangel’s troops have disarmed?”

Garrus waited for the negative, or worse, the damning silence, to prove that whatever Shepard was trying to do wasn’t working—

“Confirmed,” the tinny voice of Tyr’s second in command came from the comm. Garrus blinked, and dared steal a glance at Shepard out of the corner of his eye; she was still wearing that grim smile, her eyes slightly narrowed, revealing nothing. 

“Sounds like you got us,” she said, her voice infuriatingly cheerful. “So before you plan on making us walk the metaphorical plank, I just have one question.”

Tyr barked a short laugh. “Gonna try and get me monologuing, Shepard? Buy yourself a few more precious seconds of life?”  

“Oh, fuck no,” Shepard said. “Trust me, if it was a choice between dying quick or living an extra three minutes to listen to you talk, I’d gladly shoot myself. No, my question wasn’t for you. I was just going to ask Archangel whether his code of honor would allow me to shoot you in cold blood about two minutes from now.”

Tyr didn’t laugh. Shepard hadn’t spoken in a tone of voice that would allow it. Garrus glanced at her out of the corner of his eye and flicked a single mandible. “If you get the chance, Shepard, I can’t say I’d stand in your way.”

Her eyes, when she looked at him, were bright. “Good. I’d hate to get on your bad side all over again.”

“Shut up!” Tyr snapped. “You both going to feel so clever with matching holes in your heads?”

“And how clever do you feel, Tyr?” Shepard turned on her as smoothly as a bullet sliding into a chamber. “Feeling good about this plan? Feeling like you have a handle on things?”

“I said shut up—”

“You know,” Shepard continued, as if Tyr wasn’t currently pointing a massive rifle at her face, “I’m actually pretty pissed. This whole thing _almost_ worked for you. Except I thought you might try something like this, you stupid, obvious bastard. So I had Zaeed install a backup of EDI’s core processes on Jack’s ship, so that if and when you tried something so colossally stupid as moving against me, you’d only _think_ you shut her down.”  Shepard’s smile showed teeth.

Tyr fumbled for her comm panel, her face gone slack with fear. “Lisus,” she barked. “Report—”

“I’m afraid your squad is currently unavailable.” EDI’s polished tones came through the room’s speaker system, sending Tyr shooting to her feet. “Because Archangel’s crew members never received his orders to stand down, your men remain under their guard. I fabricated the confirmation from your second in command myself.”

Tyr’s hands gripped Garrus’s rifle as if longing for her own gun. But she still kept it pointed squarely at Shepard and him.

“You’re unarmed,” she said through gritted teeth. “I could still kill you right here.”

“True,” Shepard said good naturedly. “If you want to get yourself shot by the first person to come through that door.”

“No one’s coming in!” Tyr snarled. “The second I see that door start to open I put a bullet in you both.” Sweat was starting to stand out on her forehead now, catching the blue light of the fish tank in an sickly gleam. “I’m walking out of here,” she said. “Anyone takes a shot on me, and Garrus Vakarian’s name gets sent straight to every merc with an extranet connection.”

“About that.” Shepard tilted her head. “If you plan on infiltrating a ship with the world’s most advanced artificial intelligence, maybe the crux of your failsafe shouldn’t hinge on a device which transmits an easily replicated signal. Speaking of which—EDI?”

“Transmitting a duplicate signal of Kelas Tyr’s life signs now, Commander.”

“Excellent. Then in that case, Jack, why don’t you step into my office.”

A low, dangerous chuckle from the comms. “I thought you’d never ask.”

From behind the tarp above Shepard’s bed, the thud of boots hitting the skylight.

It exploded inward on a purple wave, the black tarp shredding into a dozen pieces as the glass rained down on the room. Tyr only had time to turn around and take one stumbling step backward before the figure dropped down and landed on the bed, crouched in the center of a corona of biotic energy, as she slowly raised her shaved head to fix Tyr with a smile.

“Sup, _asshole_.”

Tyr started to raise her gun.

With a single clenched fist the purple energy leapt off Jack’s body like something alive, seizing around Tyr and lifting her off the ground. Garrus’s rifle clattered to the floor. For a second Tyr hung suspended. And then Jack made a gesture like she was flinging something to the side, and Tyr’s body slammed head-first into the wall of glass and water on the other side of the room, shattering the glass with a burst of red that the wave of water washed away almost instantly. It gushed out of the hole in the fish tank, soaking the floor, until there was nothing but Tyr’s body lying in the center of the empty fish tank, and a foot of water quickly draining through the ports in the floor of Shepard’s room.

Shepard lifted her boots out of the water with a single raised eyebrow. “Fucking kidding me, Jack?”

Jack shrugged, leaning down to pluck the bottle of alcohol out of the water where it bobbed near her knees. “You always said you hated that thing,” she said, pulling the cork out with her teeth. “Guess it’s time to redecorate.”

Shepard stared at Tyr’s body with a forlorn expression. “I was really hoping I’d get to shoot her.”

“Body’s right there. I won’t judge.”

“It won’t be the same.” She turned back to Garrus, who was still staring in slack-mandibled astonishment. Kicking her boots off in the remaining water, she bent down and pulled something out; his rifle, dripping but whole. After a brief moment of hesitation, she held it out to him once again.

“So,” she said. “Looks like my crew has some vacancies. Gonna make me beg for you?”

Her scars gleamed in the room’s low light. She looked like the creatures that had given Archangel his name, dark and powerful and—beautiful. He’d never have thought to apply that word to a human, but there was no denying it now.

Garrus closed his hands around the gun’s familiar grip, but his eyes never left Shepard. “Tempting,” he said, hoping she didn’t pick up the frisson in his subvocals—or maybe, hoping she did. “I had a gun to your head,” he said. “You had every reason to make sure my family suffered for it. Why help me?”

“Maybe I’m not as bad as you thought,” Shepard said, with a grin as sharp as the shattered glass around her. “But don’t tell anyone I said that.”

She hadn’t let go of his gun yet. Garrus felt as if there was an electrical charge running through it from her to him, and then back again; the rush of action still thrumming in the cavities of his chest, searching for release. A slow, lazy smile spread over Shepard’s face as she stared him down. He realized, with a corresponding heat rising in the skin between his plates, that she was feeling exactly the same.

 “Jack,” she said without looking away or letting go of the gun, “I’m gonna need you to go check on the crew.”

“Check on them? What are they, toddlers?”

“Toddlers with guns. Go make sure they aren’t killing each other.”

Jack growled in aggravation. “I’m pretty sure Jacob can handle it—“

“ _Jack, get the fuck out of here.”_

At last Jack looked at the two of them. Then she _looked_. “Oh. Right. Finally.”

“ _Go_ , Jack.”

“Jesus, I’m going.”

Shepard waited until the door hissed closed again before letting go of the gun. Garrus almost swayed, as if he’d been caught in the grip of something that had only just now released him; but no, that wasn’t right either. He was still in its grip, and he could feel it drawing tighter.

She stepped up to the bed, an island in the midst of the now-ankle-deep water, strewn with shards of glass from the broken skylight above. With a few brisk tugs Shepard had yanked the top blanket loose and tossed it into the water, glass and all—the smooth sheets below looked safe enough.

Then, Shepard pulled her shirt over her head.

“I’m assuming I didn’t misread the situation.” It was a question, though it lacked the inflection of one; Shepard was still turned away, facing the bed. Her back was smooth, its muscles tapered, open and unplated. It was incredible, to see the lines of bone beneath them. So delicate. Gently, Garrus laid his rifle on the table by the couch, and then stepped forward. Just behind her.

“I know I talk a big game about being a badass pirate captain and all, but I wouldn’t want to like, accidentally steal your virtue. Or something.”

Garrus chuckled. This close, he could see the small bumps raise on the her back of her neck at the sound. “You know Shepard, you’re not very good at being sincere.”

“Actually, I _did_ know that.” 

Garrus let his fingers trail over the exposed skin of her arm. The flesh yielded to his touch, but there was hard muscle beneath. The points of his talons left faint lines in their wake, which disappeared a moment later. “Tell you what,” he said. “I’ll keep you in check if you do the same for me.”

Shepard’s hand slid over his own as she leaned backwards against him. The gesture was so strangely tender it almost made Garrus pull back. What was she—?

The only warning he got was the bunching of her muscles beneath the skin, and the hand over his own grasping his wrist. Then she did something that involved pushing backwards and pulling forward, and suddenly his back had hit the bed and he was staring through the broken skylight at the smog-streaked sky of Omega beyond. Shepard stood at the foot of the bed, looking far too self-satisfied for Garrus’s liking.

“Sure you can handle me?” she said.

In a smooth motion Garrus hooked his foot over the back of Shepard’s knee and sent her stumbling forward; with a deft yank he pulled her on top of him, the warmth of her body pressed close to his. He could see the way her pupils expanded, leaving a faint red-glowing rim like the corona of an eclipse.

“Pretty sure,” he said, and they didn’t speak after that.  


	13. Chapter 13

Afterward, Shepard stretched her body against his side, all smooth and soft and unfamiliar in ways Garrus was still trying to process. “Don’t even act like you aren’t joining my crew now.”

Garrus tucked his chin down so he could fix Shepard with a bleary-eyed stare. “Who says I’m even considering it?”

“I say you are. And I’m not wrong.” She stared up into his face, waiting for him to deny it. When he didn’t, her smile grew even bigger. “I knew you wouldn’t be able to resist me in the end.”

“We both saw the data from the Acheron,” Garrus said. “My team wouldn’t have a pyjack’s chance on Tuchanka of making a dent in their organization. But with more ships, more resources…”

“Mmm, you really know how to sweet-talk a girl.” She did that thing where she moved against him in a sort of wave, and for a moment Garrus almost wanted to offer her a genuine compliment. But then he remembered that the woman beside him was using him the way he was using her, and if they just happened to respect each other in the morning, well, that would make things easier on the battlefield.

But first. “If I’m going to work with you, I need you to answer one question.”

Shepard raised a single eyebrow. “Guess that’ll depend on the question.”

“Why are you doing this? All of this, I mean.” Garrus gestured vaguely, encompassing the room, the ship, the life Shepard had pulled around herself like armor. “You don’t strike me as the type to run around sowing mayhem for fun, no matter how you act in front of your crew.” If it were any different, he wouldn’t consider joining her. But Shepard knew that already.

Shepard shrugged, as if the question he’d asked was easy. But the way her expression didn’t change at all suggested it was anything but. “You’ve heard it all before on the news, I’m sure. The Reapers are coming. I believed it then and I believe it now, and I’m going to do whatever it takes to make sure we’re ready to stop them.” 

“You didn’t think that sticking with the Alliance and all of its resources would be a better way to prepare the galaxy?”

Shepard’s smile had a bitter edge. “Last time I tried that, I died knowing that no one believed me—and that everything I ever cared about would be burning in less than a lifetime.”

“And Cerberus?”

“They were even worse. The Council and the Alliance wanted to ignore me, but Cerberus wanted to _use_ me. They talked about stopping the Reapers, but what I heard and saw on the Collector base…” She shook her head. “I think that was never a part of their plan.”

“So you decided to go it alone.”

“You know, for a literal vigilante you seem pretty opposed to that idea.” 

“Well, I was never trying to save the _entire galaxy_. And you still haven’t answered my question.”

She stared at the ceiling, her expression blank. Garrus kept the arm around her shoulders loose, easy to pull away from. But she didn’t. “Have you ever,” she began, “had a dream where you keep saying the same thing over and over, but no one around you can hear you speak?”

Garrus thought back to his time at CSEC. The search warrants that never came through, the charges mysteriously dropped. The vast mechanism of corruption that would have crushed him in its gears, if he let it. “Yeah.”

“It was like that. After Saren, Sovereign, the Citadel. Every time I said the word _Reapers_ it was a joke.”

“I was on the Citadel when Sovereign attacked,” Garrus said softly.

Shepard turned to look at him, her expression guarded. “And did you believe what I said back then?”

“Not really,” Garrus admitted. “It was easier not to. I guess that’s what everyone thought.”

“Guess so.” She turned her gaze back to the ceiling, the patch of darkness where the orange glow of Omega crept in at the sides. “And then I died. And came back. And everything was _still_ the same. I tried, and tried, worked with Cerberus, begged the Alliance to listen, and for what? Even if they believed me, no one was going to act. But what I saw, in that Prothean beacon—and then, being dead—”

Garrus literally felt the shudder go through her body. Her eyes closed, as if she didn’t want to see him seeing her like this. Weak. He almost tightened his arm around her shoulders, but that wasn’t who they were. In a moment, the lingering pain on her face smoothed away, and she wore the blank mask of Commander Shepard again.

“I knew action was the only thing that would save us,” she said. “So I decided to act. Screw waiting for orders, being shoved into busywork to keep me out of trouble, keep me _quiet_. I’m doing the things the rest of civilization is too chicken-shit to even consider. I destroyed the Collector base. I blew up the Alpha relay. I’m going to scrape together every single resource to fight the Reapers this galaxy has to offer, and I’m going to hold it all together with my bare hands if I have to. Until it falls apart, or I do.”

“You’re trying to unite the gangs,” Garrus said softly. He hadn’t known whether it was true until Shepard blinked. That told him everything he needed to. He’d been a detective once, after all. “Not destroy the Blue Suns, but take them over. And the Blood Pack, and Eclipse—”

“And once I have them, I’ll have the leverage I need to draw even more to the cause,” she finished. “It’s all about trading up, Garrus. That’s what you’re doing, and it’s what I’m trying to do. Once I have the merc gangs, I can go after Cerberus. And once I have Cerberus…” She held open her hands, as if weighing the fate of the galaxy in each palm. “With that kind of leverage behind me, the rest will _have_ to listen.”

“You really believe it’s possible.” Garrus couldn’t keep the note of wonder out of his voice. What she was suggesting was insane—to consolidate more power than any individual had ever wielded, and use it to force the galaxy to save itself.

Shepard glanced at him through her eyelashes, her smile almost rueful. “I never do anything if I don’t think it’ll work. It’s just that sometimes the chances it’ll work are very, very small.”

“Infinitesimal,” Garrus agreed.

Shepard’s smile broke into an all-out grin. “Wow. You really think I can do it, huh?”

“I never said that.”

“Oh, but you’re thinking it. You were just thinking, ‘If anyone can do it, Shepard can.’”

“Actually I was thinking about how my arm is falling asleep.”

“Well, there’s one problem of galactic proportions I can easily solve.” She propped herself on her elbow and rolled on top of him, running her fingernails down the grooves in his crest in a way that made his subvocals thrum.

He pressed a finger over her lips before she could put them to sinister work. “I want full authority over my ship and crew.”

“That’s a given,” Shepard said, turning her head to kiss the side of his talon without taking her eyes off his.

“And a vote equal to yours and Jack’s on the fleet’s movements.”

Shepard actually rolled her eyes at that, but it didn’t stop her tongue from flicking out to tease at the end of his digit. “Fine.”

“And I have the right to quit whenever I want.”

“Sure.” She rubbed his finger against the side of her cheek, the scars rough and warm beneath his skin. “But you won’t.”

He didn’t bother to deny it.

“Oh,” she said, and sat up at once. The cold air that rushed in to take her place made an unintentional whine build in the back of Garrus’s throat. “And before I forget—”

She leaned over the edge of the bed to fish something off the still-damp floor; luckily the worst of the water had drained away. The wet bundle of fabric she lifted into view must have been her hastily-discarded pants, because she reached into a pocket to fish something out before holding it out to him.

“My visor.” He couldn’t keep the surprise and pleasure from his voice as he accepted the glass pane back from her. The headset was still missing, but that would be easy enough to replace. Holding it in his hand made him feel as if a piece of himself had been restored. “You were carrying it with you?”

“I figured this moment would come.” She slid back against his side. “So what do you think, Archangel,” she said, her scars a red constellation splitting the dark. “Ready to get into bed with the great Commander Shepard, to bring the merc gangs under our boot heel for the greater good of the galaxy?”

This time Garrus didn’t hesitate to wrap his arms around her back. “Well, someone should probably stick around to make sure you don’t appoint yourself emperor once all the Reapers are dead.”

Garrus could feel the curve of Shepard’s smile dragging over his mandible like a blade. “Darling,” she whispered, “Just _try_ to stop me.”


End file.
